


Some Kind of Nature

by stilitana



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alien Biology, Ben Hargreeves Lives, Ben Hargreeves-centric, Body Horror, Body Image, Coming of Age, Dysfunctional Family, Fix-It of Sorts, Found Family, Gen, Growing Up, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Literary References & Allusions, Moral Dilemmas, Number Five doesn't disappear, Reconciliation, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Science Fiction, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Rivalry, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:33:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 117,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25208527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stilitana/pseuds/stilitana
Summary: formerly titled "like lovecraft in brooklyn"Sometimes Six thought about turning himself inside out. About opening the portal wide and swallowing himself whole. Then what would he see? Where would he be?Whatwould he be?-A slice of life/coming of age AU in which Ben survives and Five isn't stranded in the future, focused on character development and sibling dynamics, exploring how the characters are shaped by their upbringing through Ben's perspective. Also, a heavy helping of contemplation on the Horror. In which somehow, coexisting with an alien body double proves less fraught than forming a family.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Ben Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves & The Horror, Ben Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Allison & Ben & Diego & Klaus & Luther & Vanya, Number Five | The Boy & Ben Hargreeves, The Hargreeves Family
Comments: 227
Kudos: 346





	1. Field Day

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, dear reader. Would you believe me if I told you I've wanted to write this for eight years now, since I first read the comics? 
> 
> As always, comments/critique are most welcome, and if you'd like to chat, you can find me on tumblr at [stilitana](https://stilitana.tumblr.com/). Thank you for reading!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on structure: I hope the fragmentary vignettes are not too confusing/annoying to read. The story came to me as a series of childhood scenes that more or less coalesce into the adult plot. Also, in this AU, Ben lives, Five doesn't vanish, and there's no apocalypse, and yet somehow things still go wrong, because that's what family does. I wanted to limit the superhero aspects and make this a world more like our own than the canonical show/comics, so that I could focus on what interested me about the characters and their relationships.

> “What are you?" I whispered. "What are we to you?"  
>   
> She lay still, rested her head on her topmost coil. "You know me as no other does," she said softly. "You must decide.”
> 
>   
> ― Octavia E. Butler, [Bloodchild and Other Stories](https://bc.instructure.com/courses/1224788/files/60377729?module_item_id=16100327)

The Horror stirred at the scent of blood, and Number Six looked up from his book to see Vanya drop the knife and squeeze her thumb. She swore under her breath and turned to run the small cut under the sink, abandoning her apple-slicing. She caught his eye and froze for a second. Like a prey animal momentarily paralyzed by the gaze of something fatal. The Horror could feel her heartbeat quicken, and it coiled under his skin, her fear rousing it. Their own heart sped up in response. 

“Ben?” 

Ben blinked and made himself smile at her. “Sorry, I was spacing out there for a second. Did you say something?” 

“Oh. No. Your eyes...” 

“What?” 

“Never mind,” she said, shaking her head and turning to the sink, deliberately putting her back to him, as if it took some effort to do so. “Trick of the light.” 

Ben looked down at his book, the letters swarming across the page like ants on a piece of fruit. The Horror rumbled in his chest, curled there like a fat, lazy housecat. They took a deep breath and sunk deeper down into the armchair, skin shifting. Always trying to get comfortable. To make themselves somehow fit just right, and lock into place, in a way that made sense. The clock on the wall ticked. They had seen beyond the event horizon of a black hole, and there was...there was...nothing he could comprehend. Not his memory. 

He had to be careful, letting the Horror’s thoughts float across their mind. Never fully relaxing, in case his daydreams should melt into its dreaming. You could get lost there. 

Number Six stared at the page until the letters made sense again, and kept reading. 

Today was their birthday, and they are nine years old. The cakes sat warm and heavy on their stands, unfrosted and steaming. The heat of the oven warmed the kitchen. Mom hummed as she stirred her bowl of buttercream frosting, joints squeaking ever so quietly. She had cut off the rounded tops of both cakes, one vanilla and one chocolate, so that she could stack them evenly on top of each other. The discarded slivers of cake sat on a paper plate on the counter. 

“Now can I?” Six asked, fingers gripping the counter edge, pleading eyes flicking from Mom to the warm cake. Their stomach growled. 

“If they aren’t too hot,” she said, smiling at them. She was always smiling. 

Six reached forward, making a show of touching one fingertip to the rich dark chocolate to check its temperature, then scarfed it down. The thing that lived under his skin rumbled low, so low nobody else could hear it; he registered it as a shuddering in his marrow, a purring against his bones. 

Six giggled. The thing made little bubbles ripple up and down beneath his skin. It tickled. He chased one up his arm with his fingertip and though how they looked like the flurries of bubbles in an aquarium. He liked that. Liked to think of their body as like an aquarium, all pretty and alive and a home. 

Mom ruffled their hair. “My little helper.” 

Six grinned at her and ate more cake. He could only eat so much until their stomach hurt, but they were never quite full. Sometimes he had the strange thought that he’s got _another_ stomach somewhere else, and that’s where the empty feeling is. He could almost feel it, like a phantom limb. 

Six watched the ripples roll up and down his arms, following them with his fingers without pressing down, just tracing. Footsteps—he tensed, but it was only Vanya, so he smiled at her and didn’t take his arms off the table to hide them in his lap. 

Vanya huffed and clambered onto the stool next to him, elbowing him out of the way. “Don’t eat it all, fatty,” she grumbled, taking a long strip of golden cake. 

“Hey.” 

She just rolled her eyes and grinned. “Look, I’m gonna eat it like a bird,” she said, tilting her head back and dangling the cake above her mouth. Ben laughed and she grinned at him, cheeks bulging out with cake. 

“You two are my silly ones,” Mom said, and leaned over to pinch their cheeks and muss their hair. Vanya ducked away, but Ben let her. This kind of attention was hard to come by, after all, and if he wanted it, it was only going to come from Mom. Sometimes Dad told Luther good job or rested his hand on Allison’s head very briefly, just for a second. But that was all. 

“ _Mo_ -om,” Allison yelled, running into the room with Diego stomping along behind her. “Diego’s being annoying.” 

“Are you two playing nicely?” Mom said. 

“I just said he’s being—” 

“You shouldn’t have cheated,” Diego said, crossing his arms. 

“That doesn’t mean you get to push me.” 

“You cheat every time. I told you I wouldn’t play if you were going to cheat. You promised.” 

“You pushed me!” 

“Okay, okay. Why don’t you quiet down now, it’s all right. Come sit with your brother and sister for a little while and you won't be angry anymore.” 

Diego hardly looked at Vanya and Ben, just slouched onto a stool and propped his chin on his hands, glowering at the countertop. Allison looked at them with narrow, critical eyes, and then sat beside Ben, as far from Diego as she could get. 

Ben slid his arms off the table, resting them in his lap and trying to surreptitiously roll his sleeves down. 

“What are you two doing?” Allison said.

“Eating cake,” Vanya said.

Allison wrinkled her nose. “It’s morning.” 

"So?” 

Allison glanced at Mom, who just went on smiling. “Well, all right,” she said, eating a sliver of chocolate. She swung her legs, knocking Ben gently in the ankle. He flinched and tucked his legs under the rung on the stool, out of her way, thinking the contact must have been an accident, but then she hooked her foot around his ankle and dragged his leg back out again, softly knocking her shiny black shoe against his sneaker, bumping their knees. 

“What have you two been doing?” she asked.

“Just sitting here,” Ben said.

“That’s boring. You’re always just sitting around,” Allison said.

“Nuh-uh,” Vanya said. “We play our own games. 

“You play board games. With Pogo.” 

“So?” 

“So...don’t you want to do something fun for a change?” 

“Like what?” Ben asked.

Allison’s eyes gleamed. She leaned in closer. “Want to play capture the flag?” 

“Sure,” Ben said, even though little flurries of anxiety started flip-flopping around in his stomach. 

“I don’t know...” Vanya said.

“Oh, come on,” Allison said. “Everyone else already said yes.” 

“Klaus too?” Ben said, somewhat surprised. Four was never a big fan of recreational contact sports. He got enough of that in training, where the games felt less like fun and more like something mean and dangerous, with Dad standing off to the side taking notes and keeping score. Numbering. 

Allison nodded. “It’s just a game, just for fun.” 

“Is that what you call it?” 

Ben looked between his sisters, caught in the middle of their staring match. He leaned back in his seat.

Then Allison surprised them both. “Dad’s not even watching,” she whispered. “It’s just for fun.” 

Their staring match went on a moment longer, and then Vanya relented. “Fine,” she said, like it didn't matter, like the game was beneath her. “I’ll play, since you begged.” 

Allison just rolled her eyes and slid off her stool. “Come on then.” 

They followed her outside, into the backyard which stretched in a sloping field across the property, ringed by the dark treeline. Their father valued their privacy. It was for their own benefit, Ben knew, but the woods still scared him at night. But now the sun was shining, and all six of his siblings were gathered in the yard. 

Ben went to Klaus’ side. “How’d they get you to play?” 

Klaus grinned and shrugged. “It’s not training this time, just a game.” 

Ben hoped that was true, but deep down he wasn't sure he could tell the difference. He fidgeted with the cuffs of his sleeves, shifting his weight from foot to foot. The thing was restless today. They were restless. 

He couldn’t quite tell the difference between him and Them, either. The way Dad talked, there was one—there was Ben, and there was the monster he had to control. This didn't make much sense at all, didn’t feel right or true, but if Dad said so, it had to be. 

Which was a good thing, Six thought. People were scared of Them, disgusted by Them. He didn’t want to be scary or disgusting. If the thing was separate from him, then he didn't have to be.

“Boop,” Klaus said, poking Ben on the cheek. Ben felt the small tendril that had reached across his cheek beneath the skin shift and retract, sinking down. He held very still, trying not to wince. It was only Klaus. Klaus never looked scared or grossed out by the little glimpses of Them his siblings had seen. (The rare, more dramatic looks they caught during training were another thing--that’s where the thing was supposed to be out. Ben thought it scared them more, when they saw it outside training, and remembered that it never really went away. That it wasn't a quality of his, like Luther’s strength, or a skill like Diego’s aim, a weapon that could be put down and left behind when training was over—but another living thing, something entirely unlike their own abilities. Ben didn’t have a power; he harbored one.) 

But Klaus only ever looked curious. “Your buddy wants to play, too,” he said. 

Ben laughed, a little forced. He had his orders from Dad. Total control; he was not to let Them out. Even the slightest signs earned him a disappointed look or a scolding, each one a testament to his failure to properly train his power. He tried. He really, really did, but... 

But it just didn’t work. It was like trying to will his own arms and legs away, or make himself invisible. He didn’t dare say that to Dad, or to the others. That would imply that they weren’t actually all that separate, the thing and him, and then what would he be? Frightening. Disgusting. Not a boy with a monster inside him, just a monster. So he kept trying. 

“Can you feel it when it does that?” Klaus said, watching the tendril retract slowly across Ben’s cheek, down his neck, until it disappeared under his collar. 

Ben glanced around. The others weren’t paying them any attention, too absorbed watching Diego and Luther argue about what rules they were going to play by. “Of course I can,” he said.

“Do you feel it when I do that?” Klaus asked, poking his neck, where They were moving.

“Do _you_ _?_ _”_ Ben said, poking him back, a little harder than Klaus had. 

“Well, yeah, but I mean, can you feel it—like, do you feel when I touch it?” 

Ben looked at the ground. Shame curled in his belly, and he wasn’t sure why, exactly, but it was there nonetheless. He shrugged. “Yeah.” 

Klaus grinned. “Cool. What’s it feel like?” 

“Like...” How to explain? Their sensations were different from his other body’s, but not because they weren’t his own—just because the world felt different to Their touch. But he didn’t really want to talk too deeply on that subject. He was already giving away a lot, more than he'd tell the others. “It feels like being touched, I don’t know. It just feels like you’re poking me.” 

Klaus frowned, and Ben’s stomach twisted. But Klaus didn’t comment on what that said about the so-called division between Them and Ben; he just said, “So when he makes you train with it—you feel everything, like it’s happening to you? It hurts you when he, you know...hurts it?” 

Ben’s whole body tensed, even the parts nobody else could see, hidden away inside him. He nodded stiffly. “Do we have to talk about it?” 

“Sorry.” 

“It’s okay. Just—he isn’t here right now. We aren’t training, just playing a game. So we don’t have to think about it.” 

They turned their attention to the others, who had been hotly debating who would be the team captains. Ben was more than happy to stay on the sidelines of that particular fight. Even if he wanted that kind of responsibility (which he decidedly did not,) it wasn't like he’d stand any chance, what with numbers one-through-three more than eager to defend their place at the top of the bracket, and all the privileges that came with it. Whatever those actually were.

Personally, Ben didn’t really understand the numbers. The only reasoning he could really decipher was that the higher up you were, the more Dad approved of you, the more value he thought you had. Not quite favorites, but something close, perhaps. It could just be their suitability for leadership, or their usefulness in a fight, but still...even those metrics didn't really work. There were too many factors, he thought, for one number system to work in every situation. Why even have one at all, then? All it seemed to do was make them waste their time on rivalries, turn their relationships strained and volatile. 

It would take him a few more years to think—maybe that was the point all along. 

“Fine, who cares—you two be the team leaders!” Allison said, exasperated. “No one is even arguing with you, geez, just split up the teams already.” 

“Are we picking teams?” Luther asked. 

“Can we just do evens and odds and be done?” Diego said, and privately, Ben was relieved. He only hated being the last one to be picked slightly more than he hated having to watch it happen to someone else. 

“Yeah, sure,” Luther said, and of course he didn’t have any problem with that—he got Allison on his team. And Five, who was pretty formidable in his own right. The only complaint Luther could possibly have about Five was that he occasionally seemed to amuse himself with trying to make Luther look dumb. 

“But we _always_ do even and odds,” Allison said. 

“So?” Luther said, looking at her in confusion. “You mean you want to switch?” He looked over at Ben and Klaus, baffled, and he couldn’t possibly mean to sound as horribly dismissive as he did. 

“No,” she huffed. “I just mean it wouldn’t kill us to switch it up now and then, that’s all.” 

“Can I switch?” Vanya asked, staring right at Allison. 

Ben and Klaus exchanged a glance, Klaus raising one quizzical eyebrow. Ben just shrugged. Whatever weird feud their sisters had going on, he didn’t pretend to understand it. 

“The teams are uneven—then they have one more player,” Five said. 

“What, you don’t think we can beat them anyway?” Luther said, grinning at Diego, who scowled. “Sure, Vanya—make it at least a little challenging for us.” 

“Like _she’s_ going to give us a challenge,” Allison huffed. 

“Maybe we can just take turns,” Ben said, immediately regretting it as they all turned to look at him. “Someone could sit out, and swap in the next round, so it’s even...” 

Luther waved a hand, dismissing him. “No, it’s fine, we should all play.” 

Well, all right. Ben didn’t want to sit out anyway. Sometimes he didn’t know why he bothered opening his mouth. 

Luther handed off the blue flag to Diego, and took the red flag to the other end of the yard. The two teams separated. As they walked to their side of the yard, Diego said, “So, any strategy ideas?” 

“You’re the boss,” Klaus said, grinning. 

Diego rolled his eyes. “Well, does anybody want to be the guard?” 

“I can,” Ben said. He really didn’t, but the impulse to volunteer himself came more from a sense of obligation than a real desire to guard the flag. 

Diego nodded. “And Klaus, maybe you can hang back too and help him, while Vanya and I go after their flag?” 

Klaus gave him a salute. “Whatever you say, boss.” 

“Looks like they’ve got Allison guarding. We’re pretty fast,” Diego said to Vanya, “but Five is faster. Maybe we could try and get him out first, and then we’d all be able to focus on keeping Luther away from the flag?” 

“Okay,” she said, “but what about offense? What’s our plan for getting their flag?” 

“Isn’t it kind of impossible to plan that far ahead?” Diego said. “Who knows what’s going to happen.” 

Luther always made a plan, when he was in charge--not that his plans always worked.

The game began, and Klaus drifted away from the position Diego gave him midfield to hang around Ben. “This would be more fun with more people,” he said. 

“Probably.” 

“Hey, can’t you just...” Klaus put his wrists against his stomach and then shot his arms out. “You know, tag ’em all out in one go?” 

Ben picked at a loose thread on his jumper. His skin is roiling again beneath the fabric. “No.” 

“Are you scared to?” 

Ben stared at Klaus, whose expression was open and neutral, not at all accusatory. “I'm not supposed to do that outside training. And I don't want to. I don't think people like seeing Them."

“It’s okay,” Klaus said. “I wasn’t saying you should—just that, you could totally own this game. They wouldn’t stand a chance.” 

Ben smiled despite himself. 

They watched as Five raced across the field, dodging past Vanya, who chased him within range of Diego. 

“I guess I should help them,” Klaus said, looking squeamish as he wrapped one hand around his chest to hold his other arm. 

“It’s just a game,” Ben said. And it was. It really was, and he did his best to ignore the pathetic, desperate part of him that wanted to win, because he had something to prove. 

“Try telling the rest of them that,” Klaus muttered. 

Diego shouted, and there went Luther, taking advantage of their distraction and running forward across the field. 

“Oh, shoot,” Ben said. 

“You said it." 

“Klaus, Ben, get him!” Diego yelled, and then launched himself through the air, diving after Five. The other boy, distracted by outmaneuvering Vanya, didn’t jump away in time, and Diego’s hand collided with his back. Diego landed in the grass while Five stumbled a step before catching his balance and dusting himself off, even though he hadn’t fallen. 

“Klaus!” Diego yelled again, scrambling to his feet, feverish now as he sprinted towards Luther, Vanya closing him off from the other side. 

“What’s he want me to do?” Klaus said. “It’d be like jumping in front of a moving train, come on. He’d run me over!” 

Ben couldn’t say he didn’t agree. It wasn't that Luther _tried_ to beat them all up; it was just that he didn’t have to try in order to do so at all. He didn’t always know his own strength, or how much of it most of them lacked. 

But with both Diego and Vanya heading him off, Luther was having trouble getting across the field. Then all of a sudden, Vanya broke away and made a mad dash for the other side of the field, sprinting full tilt towards where Allison was standing in front of the red flag. 

Luther tore after her, clumps of grass ripping out of the earth below his feet as he pounded across the field, Diego chasing after him. 

Standing off to the side in the vaguely-designated jail spot, Five heaved a sigh. “One has to wonder when they’ll tire of these tedious power plays.” 

Ben and Klaus exchanged a glance, and Klaus shrugged. 

“What do you mean?” Ben asked.

Five looked at him with one brow barely quirked, and Ben’s face heated up. “Really, Six?” Five looked back at the field. “I think we all know it’ll come to no good,” he murmured. 

Ben pretended not to hear him. Sometimes the things Five said made no sense, but rang with a note of prophecy anyway, one he didn’t like at all. 

“Vanya, look out!” Diego shouted. “Turn back!” 

She ignored him, running straight at the flag with single-minded focus. From this far, Ben couldn't quite make out who moved first, but they all watched as Vanya threw herself at the flag, only for Allison to fling herself into her sister’s path, so that they both went down together. And then Luther stopped and turned, causing Diego to nearly fall as he tried to turn around on the spot and sprint back to their side of the field. Of course, he didn’t make it. 

“Well, we’re done for. Good game, go team,” Klaus said, watching both Vanya and Diego corralled off to jail. 

"What was she thinking?" Ben sighed.

“The two of you could wipe the field with them, you know.” 

Klaus and Ben both stared at Five, who met their gazes, unmoved.

Klaus laughed. “How do you figure that?” 

Five looked away, back at the field. “Or maybe not. You wouldn’t, anyway. We are who we are, I guess.” 

“So cryptic,” Klaus said, grinning. “You’re like a fortune cookie.” 

“Klaus! Ben!” Diego shouted, hands cupped around his mouth. “Come tag us back in!” 

“Is he crazy?” Klaus snorted. 

“I guess if we both went at once, then maybe...” 

“But then Luther would just walk over and take our flag...” 

“But he’s going to come over here and do that any second, anyway.” 

“Maybe if one of us goes, just as like a distraction?” 

They stared at each other, both reluctant to do anything but stand by, ready to get out of the way. Five cracked a grin. “It’d be a fool’s errand.” 

“Any ideas from the prisoner?” Klaus asked. 

Five shook his head. “Surrender?” 

Klaus sighed, giving Ben a salute. “Well, guess we might as well put on a good show, don’t you think?” 

Before he could reply, his brother went tearing off across the field, howling at the top of his lungs and screaming “For Valhalla!” for reasons Ben couldn’t begin to imagine. 

Luther didn’t even hesitate, letting Klaus run right past him without swerving, and well, that didn’t bode well for Ben, now did it? He really should just step aside and get out of Luther’s way. If he had any sense or self-preservation, he would, but Klaus was still shrieking like mad, and Allison was standing there with her arms crossed looking bored, and Five was smirking at him, and then he stepped forward and dug his heels in, even as his mind told him to get out of the way. 

Luther sidestepped. There was a single, solitary second, where all Ben had to do was stand still. 

But it was just a game, wasn’t it? Why should he just roll over and let Luther win? It’s not like Dad was watching, to make his inevitable defeat a humiliation. Why shouldn’t he try? 

Ben lunged sideways, and Luther’s shoulder clipped his, sending him sprawling and wrenching his body. In the same instant, Luther’s arm collided with his stomach, knocking all the wind out of him. They went tumbling to the ground in a flailing heap of limbs. 

The last thing Ben saw before Luther’s body bowled into his was the surprise on his brother’s face. Luther had not expected to meet any resistance. He’d thought he’d just reach past Ben and pick that flag out of the ground, easy as pie. 

Ben got to enjoy a moment of sweet, futile victory for a second, and then he was on the ground with his shoulder throbbing and struggling to catch his breath back, his stomach aching from the blow. 

“What were you thinking!” Luther was saying, from somewhere above him, where the sky was reeling. Their other siblings had all run over and were peering down at them, quiet and wide-eyed, the way they all got when they anticipated Dad’s disapproval. 

“Ow,” Ben said, propping himself up on his arms. 

“Why didn’t you get out of the way?” Luther said, dumbfounded, his face flushed. Was he embarrassed?

“Because I’m the guard?”

“I’m sorry,” Luther said, sounding sincere, if somewhat baffled, as though he couldn’t wrap his head around Ben’s sudden fit of madness. Ben believed him; Luther just forgot they weren’t all made of steel sometimes, was all. 

“It’s okay,” he said. "I'm fine." 

“You're not hurt?” Luther said, though he was already pulling away. Ben tried not to be hurt by that. Nobody liked to touch him. That was fine. Luther tried to back up, but stopped short. “Let go, Ben.” 

Ben blinked up at him, confused. “I’m not—” 

Then he went quiet. Yes, there were both his hands, clutching the grass. And there was his—its—their—there was one slim...tentacle, with one end wrapped around Luther’s wrist, immobilizing the fist that had winded him, and the other end disappearing beneath Ben’s shirt. 

He could feel it now. Could feel where it attached to his body, where it was wrapped around Luther’s warm wrist. It was so sensitive he could even feel the fine hairs on Luther’s skin. Not only could he feel it, he could...he could _taste_ with it. 

Ben felt a flush blooming across his face. His stomach churned. A cold feeling washed over his insides. He wanted to cry. Luther’s skin was warm and faintly salty and no matter how hard he stared, the tentacle was still there. He wanted it to go away—not here, not now, not like that—but his panic and his horror only made it curl tighter around Luther’s wrist. 

“I, I’m sorry,” he said, his voice faint. 

Luther grimaced, staring down at his arm. “It’s okay. Just let go.” 

Ben gulped air, trying to calm himself. There was no reason to be afraid of Luther; he hadn’t meant to hurt him. He was his brother. He didn’t need to be scared, didn’t need to protect himself. He could just let go. 

But They didn't seem to agree.

“I’m trying,” he said, blinking tears out of his eyes. The others were staring. He glanced quickly over their faces and saw there mingled pity, disgust, and morbid fascination. His eyes met Klaus’; his brother’s eyes were wide and full of concern. For him, Ben thought—Klaus wasn’t scared of him, he was just worried about him. They didn’t hate him, they were just worried. It was going to be okay. 

“Ben,” Luther said, a steely edge to his voice now. The tentacle wrapped a little tighter, and Luther made a face like he’d smelled sour milk. 

“Just don’t--can you guys stop staring?” he said. His voice sounded far away. He felt lightheaded, his skin on fire. Why did they all have to stare down at him like that? 

“What’s it _doing_ _?”_ Diego said. 

“Nothing,” Ben blurted. He could feel the suckers suctioning onto Luther’s arm. Like dozens of tiny mouths. Not like, he realized—they _were_ little mouths, feeling and tasting what it was they had in their grasp. Shame made his entire body feel cold and heavy. 

“It’s just...stuck on there,” Luther said. “It’s sort of...sucking.” 

Ben bit his lip, rubbing the back of his hand across his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said miserably. “I haven’t—you know I’ve never—it hasn’t done this before. I don't know how to make it stop.” 

“Dad has said that our powers will only become more apparent, the older we get,” Five said, and Ben shuddered. More of this? How much more? Was there going to be a day when he couldn’t hide it anymore, when it wouldn’t go away? 

“He said stop staring,” Klaus said, scuffing his sneaker on the grass. “If you were all staring at me like that, I’d be freaked out too.” 

“Remember what Dad says, Ben,” Luther said. “You have to have control.” 

“But what if I don't?"

“It’s okay, Ben. Maybe it just...got startled, is all,” said Vanya, but she wouldn’t quite meet his gaze, and was studiously avoiding looking at him. 

Diego bent down, reaching a tentative hand forward to poke the tentacle. “Can you feel it, if I touch it?” 

Ben felt its—his—their skin depress where Diego touched them, like soft dough. He took a sharp breath and tried to jerk away, but there was nowhere to go. “Don’t touch me.” 

“I’m not touching you, I’m touching it.” 

“Is it him?” Allison asked. “Can he feel that?” 

“You’re all making it worse,” Vanya said, but she still wouldn’t look at him. 

Tiny bubbles rolled under his skin. He could feel them like small, cold beads. He shivered. 

“It looks like you have bugs under your skin,” Allison said. 

“Maybe he does,” Diego said. “Maybe the thing laid eggs in his brain, and they’re gonna hatch, like the thing in _Alien_ ,” he said, reminding them all of the bloody scene with the chest-burster they’d stayed up all night to watch without Mom’s permission. 

Ben’s heart hammered. He wondered if they could see that, too, rising to the surface, pulsing right under the skin. 

“Stop it,” Vanya said. "That's mean, you're scaring him."

The tentacle was winding another loop around Luther’s wrist, flexing and tightening its grip. Luther looked at Ben, a tiny crease forming between his brows. “Ben?” he said, voice faltering, for once losing a little of his self-assuredness. 

“It’s going to go away now,” Ben said. 

“Are you okay?” Luther asked. “Do you need me to—” 

“Don’t get Dad!” Ben blurted, bright panic flashing in his mind. He looked at his brother with stricken, pleading eyes. “Please don’t, he’ll be – please, Luther, I promise, it won’t hurt you, I promise, I—” 

“I know, Ben,” Luther said. “I wasn’t gonna get Dad. I just meant – do you need me to do anything? Can I help?” 

Ben blinked, blushed with embarrassment. He’d slipped up. They weren’t supposed to talk about, not supposed to make obvious, the ways in which their father had lined them up and pitted them against each other, this strange hierarchy none of them yet understood but knew very well was there, as all children are aware with a canine sense of where the power lay, their own self-preservation depending on this awareness. 

He looked down, glaring at the grass stains on his pants. “I don’t have bug eggs in my brain,” he muttered, taking hold of the tentacle with one hand, and prying it off Luther’s wrist with the other. It would never have relented to anyone else. It would sooner have squeezed Luther’s arm to a pulp than be pried loose by anyone but Ben; but after a little tugging, it peeled away and let him stuff it back beneath his shirt. 

Luther rubbed his wrist. There were faint pink circles left behind by the suckers. No bruising, they would soon fade – but the sight still made Ben’s face burn. He put his hands over his face and peered at Luther through his fingers. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. 

Luther gave him a shaky grin. “What for? Everything’s fine, Ben. You handled it.” 

When Luther’s kindness came through, Ben always forgave him a hundred times he’d been unkind. It felt like redemption, Luther’s kindness. Like something worth waiting for, even suffering for. 

Klaus helped Ben to his feet and the others moved off, Diego and Luther already arguing about whose team had won and if the win counted. 

“You okay?” Klaus asked. 

Ben nodded. “Fine. Just...I wanna go inside now.” 

Klaus nodded and chattered away as the two went into the house and up to Ben’s room, where Ben curled on the bed, alternately reading and listening to Klaus’ apparently effortless stream of unending talk, while Klaus flipped through magazines and braided friendship bracelets. 

Ben felt as safe here as he ever had. He could relax here, and stop worrying and trying to hide the shifting beneath his skin. But he couldn’t feel all the way at ease; not when his own body was beyond his control, was liable to betray him at any moment. He sighed and set his book down. 

“Have you noticed your powers getting more...well, powerful, I guess? Like Dad says they will?” 

Klaus tilted his head, thinking. “It’s hard to tell. You know how when you get used to something, you sort of stop noticing little changes? Like if there’s a noise going on in the background all the time, and it gets louder bit by bit, you don’t really notice, until it’s really loud? That’s how I feel.” 

Ben nodded. He didn’t really understand what his brother’s powers were, exactly. He knew that Klaus saw and heard things that other people couldn’t, and that those things were scary. Klaus said they were ghosts. That was...difficult to accept, but then, it didn’t matter if Ben could accept it or not, did it? He wasn’t the one who saw them. 

“What about you?” Klaus asked. 

Ben shrugged, frowning up at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I guess I feel the same. Like...you don’t really notice yourself getting taller. Only after some time goes by and you get measured again, and see how short you were the last time.” 

“You’re still pretty short.” 

“Shut up.” 

“Is that all? You seem sort of worried.” 

“I guess I just...I don’t know what’s going to happen. What if...what if stuff like what happened today starts happening more, and I can’t control it? How much are things going to change? I don’t--I don’t like things changing. What if things get different, and I don’t like it, but we can’t go back?” 

“Maybe it’ll be a good change,” Klaus said, shrugging. “I know what you mean. I feel like that sometimes, too. But if it’s going to happen anyway, then...what’s the use in worrying?” 

“That doesn’t mean I can just stop.” 

“Yeah, I know. But, look...I know it upset you, but it’s not like what happened was really bad or something. The others use their powers all the time.” 

Ben was quiet for a moment, and then said, “It’s not the same. I have to have control.” 

“Did you...feel out of control, today?” 

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I panicked.” 

“That happens. Nobody’s ever in like, one hundred percent control, you know?” 

“You’re right. And that doesn’t mean they’re...that they’re bad, or anything.” 

Klaus stared at him, somewhat bewildered. “Of course it doesn’t.” 

“Right.” 

“You...you aren’t bad, Ben. Not at all. I know Dad’s always on your case about control, sometimes even more than the rest of us, but you can’t think that means you’re bad or something.” 

“They all stared at me." Klaus was quiet, and the quiet made Ben nervous, so he kept talking. “I don’t...I guess I don’t blame them, I mean, I know it’s--it’s scary looking, and weird. But, still. It doesn’t feel too great, having them look at you like that, saying that stuff...” 

He dared to look at Klaus, and found his brother glaring at the floor. “Nobody should get to make you feel like that,” he said. "Forget about them, they were being stupid." And of course Klaus knew a little bit of what it felt like, to have other people look at you like there was something off about you. They all stared plenty when he talked to the air and flinched away from things they couldn’t see. 

“You too,” Ben murmured. "Sometimes they aren't nice about your powers, either."

“I don’t think they really mean it,” Klaus said. “I think they just...don’t know what it’s like, is all.” 

Ben nodded. “Yeah.” 

“Hey, Ben...I get why you don’t feel comfortable around the others...and I know Dad’s probably made you feel like you’re going to get in trouble, if he sees you-know-what outside of training or whatever, but...you don’t have to hide from me, okay? You won’t...won’t scare me, or anything.” 

“Do you mean it?” 

Klaus nodded. “Of course I do.” 

“You really don’t...don’t think it’s gross?” 

“No. You're my brother. I think...I think sometimes, when people think something’s gross, it can say more about them than what they’re looking at, don’t you? Like, that’s something in them that’s getting in the way. It stops a lot of people from just looking a little closer, for a little longer, but if you do—then things get familiar, you know? And then they aren’t scary anymore, you’ve seen them, and gotten used to them. You know what they are, what they look like now, and not just how they make you feel at first glance. You get over yourself that way. That’s what I think anyway.” 

Ben stared at him, trying to process that. “Thank you. Nobody’s ever said anything like that, before. You don’t have to hide with me, either.” 

Klaus grinned and opened his arms. “Hug?” 

Ben was all too glad to slide off the bed and return the gesture. 

When he was young, the thing was small, too. Easier to ignore if the others wanted, easier to keep tucked away. The barrier between him and it in his mind was not so simple to control. 

Sometimes he dreamed in another language, of a world he had not seen, different from the one he lived in when he was awake. It was cold and dim and damp there. The sun burned low and red there, like a dying ember, its light metallic across the black sea. He woke up with a hollow pang in his chest and the thing curled up tight in his belly and he was homesick for another world than this one, and that scared him more than anything. 

Their father’s way of wishing them a happy birthday was the curt address he gave when dinner was over. “Another year older, children. Some of you have made progress; but you should all know how far we’ve yet to go. Tomorrow we’ll meet for evaluations. We will discuss our next steps in this new year of your lives. I trust you will make it a productive one.” 

Luther watched their father speak with his undivided attention, his back straight, his expression one of such concentration he looked almost stricken. Luther watched Dad, and Ben watched Luther. He could never get Dad’s approval, but if he did what Luther did, maybe he could be good, like Luther was. And at the very least, he’d have Luther’s approval, which he valued as though the other boy were an admired older brother, even though they were the same age. Ben didn’t need to be the hero; if he stood next to Luther, some of that light would fall on him. 

Or so he thought. Luther cast a long shadow. 

When dinner was over and Dad left, Mom brought the cake to the table, and she and Pogo sang to them while the candles glowed and they all jostled together to blow out the candles. Ben hung back. They couldn’t all be at the front, and besides, if his siblings were happy, he was happy. Mom cut them each a big slice of cake and scooped icecream onto their plates, and smiled at them while they ate and laughed as though they were her whole world. 

Ben could tell that the thing under his skin was happy, and when they were both feeling the same thing, the feeling bounced back and forth, echoing inside of them and deepening, until he felt like he could glow from how happy they were. The little shivers it caused as it thrummed beneath their skin were good and right, were as natural as his heart beating, as him smiling and ducking his head and trying to stifle his laughter while Klaus made faces at him from across the table. In such moments, he wasn’t scared of the thing. There was no him-and-it, there was only them, and they were meant to be like this, conjoined so deeply as to be inseparable. He didn’t feel ashamed when he felt it curling beneath his skin like a bunch of happy confetti, their blood running quick and bubbly like it was carbonated. He could forget the humiliation that had come before, when all of them were staring; none of them seemed to remember or to hold it against him, everything was just as it had been before. 

Their father had allowed Mom to select one present for each of them. She treated the task with the gravity of a ceremony, thinking all year about what would be the perfect gift for each of her children on their birthday. The gifts were usually small, humble objects made significant because of their thoughtfulness. She passed them around the table and Ben knew what his was before he even opened it, just by looking at its shape beneath the wrapping paper, and he grinned. Another book was always welcome, especially one from Mom, who knew he liked stories, not the sort of texts Dad insisted he read, calling anything else a frivolous distraction. 

He was slower to unwrap his gift than most of his siblings, picking at the tape so he could peel it up without tearing the paper. Beside him, Vanya carefully wound up a simple wooden music box, and opened it to hear the lullaby it played. Allison was holding a leather journal with her initials embossed on the cover and a pack of glittery gel pens, while Diego was grinning at a multi-tool with a frankly excessive amount of appliances packed into its slim frame, like two Swiss army knives got together and had a baby. 

“Now you be careful with that,” Mom said. “Or it’ll have to go in the drawer until you’re older...” 

Be careful? As though Dad didn’t already have Diego practicing with throwing knives at a dart board—a task which Ben didn’t honestly think Diego needed much practice with. 

But that was what Moms in books and on TV said—be careful, be careful. So it was sort of nice to hear, even if it didn’t really make sense. 

On his other side, Five had on his faint half-smile as he unwrapped a book about...string theory. Ben would have to ask him to explain later. Luther and the others might tease Five about his pretensions, but even though his brother could sometimes seem smug, he had also always been willing to talk and explain things to Ben. When he got to talking on a subject that interested him, that protective shell of condescension fell away, and Five just looked excited to explain his interests to someone who was willing to really listen, which Ben was. He was a good listener. He was not the strongest or the fastest or the smartest of his siblings, he had no qualities or skills that made him stand out among them really, but he liked to think he was a good listener at least. 

Luther was unwrapping a new pair of sneakers, the sort that were both in-style and practical for athletics, while across from him Klaus had what Ben guessed was some kind of novelty night light. His brother had something of a collection of such lights, at least one of which he kept on throughout the night. It looked like this one would project an array of multi-colored stars across the room, and Ben couldn’t wait to make a fort out of pillows and blankets and stay up late with it lighting up the dark in Klaus’ room. 

His own gift was a slim novel with a picture of an island surrounded by high waves, and a skinny dragon wound around the island’s width like a ribbon. It was called _A Wizard of_ _Earthsea_ _,_ and Ben opened it at once to start reading, already excited by the promise of another fantasy adventure waiting for him in its pages. It began promising enough: an island beset by storms, a young boy with six brothers who was born with magic in him, and destined to have great tales told of his great deeds. But the book wasn’t going to be about any of those deeds, so it said in the very first paragraph...so what would the story be? 

Mom rested her hand on his shoulder, and smiled down at him. Ben imagined it was a different, softer smile than the one she always wore. “My little reader—I hope you like it. I found it and I thought of you, I thought—now here’s a story for my little Number Six.” 

“Really?” 

She nodded and he grinned, ducking his head. It was something special, to be thought of like that. 

The children helped Mom clear the table, and then went up to their rooms, either shutting their doors for the night or keeping each other company before bed. Luther and Allison each shut themselves in their rooms, while Diego and Klaus were up talking. Ben followed Vanya up to her room, nose buried in his book, walking carefully so as not to trip since he wasn’t at all looking where he was going. He lay down on his stomach on the ground and read while she practiced her violin. In a little while, Five joined them, curling up with his back propped against her bed with his new book. When the squirming under the skin on Ben’s stomach got to be insistent, he rolled onto his side and hugged one of the pillows strewn across Vanya’s floor against his belly, reluctant to stop reading, even though he knew how tired they were, both him and the thing. Only when his eyes began to droop did he crawl into his own bed, where he fell asleep with the lamp on and the book still in his hands. 

He woke exhausted with hunger gnawing at his stomach. A few more moments of sleep would have made all the difference in the world, would have revived him, but his alarm was blaring and it would only make things worse if he was late. He dressed and brought the book down to breakfast, propping it open and scooping eggs and toast into his mouth one-handed. 

“Have you been up reading that all night?” Klaus whispered, sounding horrified. 

“Not _all_ night,” Ben said. 

“It must be good,” Klaus replied, though he sounded doubtful. 

“I’m not really sure yet.” 

Luther shot a warning glare at Ben from across the table, and Ben shut his mouth, glancing at their father, who had probably been a second away from telling the two of them to hush. 

Klaus just rolled his eyes and took a loud, obnoxious slurp of his orange juice. Ben snorted and hid his face in his book. He couldn’t let Klaus get him into trouble, not first thing in the morning anyway. 

“Here,” Vanya whispered, quickly passing her three pieces of bacon onto his plate. 

He shot her a quizzical look, and she muttered, “I don’t want it.” 

“You aren’t hungry?” 

She shook her head. “No, and I don’t...I don’t want to eat meat anymore.” 

He was curious to ask her more, but for the moment, that explanation was sufficient to convince him; the thing was all too glad to eat the extra food. As he held his glass, he felt the skin on the back of his hand rippling, and caught Vanya staring at it. She darted her gaze away as soon as she met his eyes, and his stomach sank as he remembered how she’d looked at him the day before, with pity and discomfort. 

He distracted himself with his book. It wasn’t what he’d thought it would be, not like the other stories of its kind he had read and loved, with a brave, strong hero (who he always, without meaning to, tended to picture as suspiciously Luther-like) who went on quests and slayed dragons. The hero was just a confused little boy who accidentally summoned a shadow, an “unnamed thing, the being that did not belong in the world...that formless, hopeless horror.” And now he was fleeing from it, or chasing it down—Ben couldn’t tell exactly, and wasn’t sure that the boy in the book quite knew, either. All that was clear was that he was terribly afraid of the shadow, which he dreamed of with “cold dread,” a creature that “was bodiless, blind to sunlight, a creature of a lightless, placeless, timeless realm.” The boy thought he could defeat the shadow, if only he knew its name, and could then have some power over it...but he said himself the shadow was nameless, and he had no idea how to destroy it. And destroy it he must, Ben was sure—what else was the point of the book, if the boy wasn’t going to go on a quest and kill a monster? 

He didn’t know if he liked the book at all. It was upsetting all his expectations. Something about it made him uncomfortable, almost upset. And yet, he couldn’t put it down. 

But put it down he must, as soon as breakfast was over and they all had to file out of the room for their evaluation. Ben followed his siblings, his mind still half in the book, idly rubbing the skin on his arms as if he could soothe the thing’s restless writhing. If Father saw...he would be so disappointed, and worse yet...Dad made no secret about his disgust for Ben’s particular powers. 

Anxiety only made the creature writhe all the more. 

Their father was very perceptive. 

The Horror had grown up alongside him as closely as his siblings had. Closer. In the faraway place, but also in their body. To see it was to see his own face. He knew this when he was very young, but then he grew a little older, and shame taught him to forget it, as much as he could ever hope to forget his own reflection. It took a long time before he recognized himself again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Bloodchild](https://bc.instructure.com/courses/1224788/files/60377729?module_item_id=16100327) by Octavia Butler is maybe my favorite science fiction short story. It's a bit gruesome so maybe look up a summary before reading if you know you're squeamish. In her afterword, she explains her motivations in writing the story, with one of them being: "When I have to deal with something that disturbs me as much as the botfly did, I write about it. I sort out my problems by writing about them.... Writing “Bloodchild” didn’t make me like botflies, but for a while, it made them seem more interesting than horrifying." I had never really heard anyone express this thought before, until I read "Bloodchild." I feel like I've been trying to do this with many things for my whole life and Butler's story gave me the words to describe that impulse.


	2. Shadow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Thank you all for reading. Bit of a shorter chapter this time...and then probably back to first chapter length because this story has gotten away from me. I'm having a lot of fun writing it though, and I hope you all enjoy. :-)

Number Six sometimes thought, growing up, that they had each been snatched from a different story, and had never been meant at all to share one together. He thought a lot about stories. He thought that they, Hargreeves one-through-six, would not be out of place in a comic book, where their powers would blend in among a cast of screwball superheroes complete with tacky costumes.

Numbers one-through-three would be the heroes, of course—they had suitable comicbook hero qualities. A strong leader, a surly sidekick handy with a knife, a masked woman who could fight with her fists as well as her brothers but was more inclined to use her charm. Four and Five would make strong supporting characters; a bit less conventional than the heroes, a bit more strange and discomfiting, but still sideline hero material.

Number seven wouldn’t belong at all. He envied her that. Number Six did not want to be a comic book character. Number Six thought too much about stories to deny that if his siblings belonged there, then so did they. He and the Horror. They were classic sci-fi pulp fiction stock, one more gimmick in a long, long line of Lovecraft rip-offs. 

They’d be the villain, of course. Maybe start out as one of the sideline heroes, with Four and Five, but eventually give in and go over to the Other Side, where all the ugly and bitter and spurned sidekicks eventually wound up. They’d be a gag character—show up for a panel or two for shock value, all inhuman ultraviolence, and then disappear, until the later issue where they returned to fight the heroes. It would provide great character development for numbers one-through-three, having to put their own brother down. Readers wouldn’t question the logic of it. They were beautiful, and Six was monstrous. In comics you could tell who was good or bad just by looking. It was all down to character design. It would seem inevitable, his betrayal and his darkness and his evil. It had been right there from the beginning; anyone could see it. 

They’d named him the Horror, after all. What else would you expect?

The only other way was to die tragically. Martyrdom would absolve him of his darkness and his otherness. They would humanize him after death as they had not done in life.

Six didn’t want to be a comic character. How could they explain themselves, in a comic? Be anything more than a gag, a joke, a two-dimensional monster done up in dripping black and red and looking like hell? No, they wanted to be in a novel. A big, formidable novel, brick-sized and dense. A crowded, meandering, convoluted novel, where they wound their way through dimly lit, foggy streets in a dreary damp city somewhere. In a novel where nothing much happened. No fights, no violence, no action, no shock and awe. Just paying visits to people, looking through the windows of warmly-lit shops and cafes, walking around in a cold fine rain, contemplating. Maybe not many people would like to read a novel like that. What would a person like them be doing there? They belonged in a dime store horror paperback, ripping civilians apart and laughing. They belonged in the kind of cheap pulp whose cover was a picture of a monster leering at a young, beautiful, frightened woman with her negligee slipping off of one shoulder. That was where they belonged. 

Well, Six couldn’t argue with that. For all that they thought about stories, they knew in the real world, you didn’t always get to tell your own, not in the way you wanted to. It had all already been written, the moment Father bought them from their mother and decided they would make a good monster. 

Still, a guy could dream. They could resist. Oh, it would all be in vain—of course it would amount to nothing in the end—but what else could they do? 

No matter how good they tried to be, how obedient to Luther and Father, no matter how hard they fought for control, to be the hero, or failing that, at least seem human, it was never enough. There they were at the end of the day, beside their smiling siblings, shellshocked, skin crawling off their frame like it wanted to get up and get away. 

He didn’t blame it. But there was nowhere to go. He could leave the house, renounce his name, but he’d still be trapped. He couldn’t walk out of his body. 

The cage was for his own good. 

“In you go,” Father said. “You know what to do.” 

Ben hesitated, his skin roiling. The thing did not want to go in the cage. The thing wanted out. It wanted to tear the room apart, to rip and to shred. Its rage frightened him. The cage would keep it contained, even if his control weakened. He stepped inside and the door sealed behind him so that it was nearly invisible, and he was trapped in a giant clear cube, like a specimen on display. His skin bubbled. The voices grew loud in his mind, dozens, hundreds, thousands, all speaking at once, whispering and wailing. He looked at Father, desperate for some comfort or assurance, but saw only indifference. His father’s look was one of vague distaste and detached interest. As though what he were looking at were not his son, but some rare, strange creature worthy of scientific interest, but nothing more. Certainly no sympathy. 

“Open the portal,” Father said. 

Ben gulped and shuddered as the thing came sliding out of his skin. Father said it came through a portal, as though Ben was nothing but a door that opened and shut between this world and another. Ben didn’t know anything about portals. None of that made much sense to him. He didn’t feel like a door. He felt like a terrarium, if that made any sense at all. It didn’t feel to him like the thing was a wholly separate being who occasionally came through the door when Ben unlocked it. It felt more like his body was the house it lived inside of. A haunted house. 

The thing’s tentacles pulsed black and deep, blood red as they unfurled, the suckers on the underside a soft, delicate pink. They were hesitant at first, and then one tentatively reached out until it made contact with the wall of the cage. Ben felt the smooth, cool surface beneath the thing's sensitive skin and felt a pang of panic and irritation cut through his fear and anxiety, and it was a feeling coming from the thing, but now he’d felt it, too, and did that mean it was also his own? 

Outside the cage, Father was taking notes. “Observations, number Six.” 

Ben swallowed past the lump in their throat. “It doesn’t like being in a cage.” 

That made two of them. 

“Don’t be glib. Elaborate.” 

Ben’s mouth was dry and made a smacking sound when he opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. His heart hammered. His skin was itching and crawling and it felt like the thing was tying his stomach in knots. Could it do that? Who knew what it could do to him? But why would it? Hurting him was like hurting itself, wasn’t it? Was that reassuring, or terrible? 

“I—I'm scared. It’s getting—it doesn’t like being in the cage.” 

Father frowned. “Don’t whine, Number Six. This is for everyone’s benefit. We could all stand to observe your...well, your condition, in a controlled environment. That is what this is all about—control. Not only of your powers, but of your emotions. Now please, let’s try and get something useful out of this exercise. Children, unpleasant as it might be, do look carefully. Especially you, Number One. You’ll need to get used to it.” 

“What?” Ben said, his body going cold. His gaze darted around, and to his dismay, there were his five siblings, minus Vanya, filing in and standing in a line behind their father at a distance. "You didn't say everyone would be watching..."

“Since you’ve routinely failed to control yourself to the extent necessary to allow your siblings to train with you properly, how else do you expect them to get acclimated? Lord knows I’ve yet to develop the stomach for it myself,” Father muttered. 

Ben’s face burned, his entire body alight with shame. He felt the suckers on the tentacle touching the wall of the cage latching onto the smooth surface, and the feeling was both alien and familiar. It was and it was not him. How could he not be doing that, and yet still feel it, with a limb that wasn’t his own, was horrible and other in every way imaginable, even as it was attached to his own body? 

If only they weren’t all watching, like they were some sideshow circus act.. 

“What...what should I say?” Ben said. 

“If you don’t have the sense to make an observation without guidance, then there’s little hope for you, Number Six.” 

The thing was now probing the limits of the cage with all four of the tentacles it had manifested, nudging and sliding across its surface and leaving behind smears of whatever clear slime they were coated in. The original tentacle was latching itself hard against the cage wall, its suckers contracting, and if the wall weren’t specially reinforced just to contain them, Ben knew that the thing would be able to buckle it. He felt its rising irritation as the wall refused to crack under its pressure, irritation that was quickly giving way to fear and rage.

“We’re scared,” he blurted. “It doesn’t understand, it doesn’t like to be trapped.” 

“Had I a greater zoological interest at the moment, that might be more useful; however, right now, I’m more concerned with your ability to control it than its feelings on the situation. And I find myself disturbed by your continued tendency to slip into the plural. Mind yourself, Number Six. Your will must prevail over its instinct.” 

The tentacle latched onto the wall unstuck itself with a wet smacking sound and several loud pops. From the corner of his eye, Ben saw several of his siblings startle at the sudden motion and noise. Father did nothing but wrinkle his face in faint distaste. 

The tentacle was now curling its sensitive extremity in on itself, protecting the soft underbelly as it wound back, preparing to strike. 

“No,” Ben said. “Stop. I don’t—I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how, Father, it’s not—I can’t make it do anything.” 

“For your sake, Number Six, I sincerely hope that is not the case.” 

What if he really couldn’t control it? What if...what if Father was wrong? What if that building rage directed itself at him, and they tore themselves apart? It would all be over in seconds. His breath came quick and shallow. 

The tentacle beat itself against the wall. The cage shuddered with the vibration of the tremendous impact, but did not buckle. The tentacle struck a second time, the others still winding their way around the edges of the cage, seeking weak spots. 

“Number Six. If you do not get yourself under control, I’ll need to take steps to help you. Perhaps simple conditioning will break its will enough to give you a chance.” 

Its terror and rage were overwhelming now, its voices a whirlwind he heard with his whole body. Little bumps like raised spines of bone rose beneath his skin in waves, settling and then pressing up again, as though they meant to tear free. The tentacle reared back for a third blow, and when it struck, their whole body jerked. 

Ben cried out and it cried with him, through him, in his voice, in a voice that was not his own. It was an inhuman, otherworldly cry of shock as the voltage running through the walls of the cage sparked down their limbs. The ends of the tentacles still suckered onto the walls of the cage, a hundred times more sensitive than the pads of his fingertips, went dark and dead. 

The charge only lasted a couple of seconds before Father shut it off. The thing drew its limbs closer to Ben’s body, their color having gone stark white before fading to the pale yellow of bones. Without thinking, he ghosted his shaking hands across the top of one and then another tentacle, wincing and trembling, one of them turning over against his palm so he could see the ends flushed livid red, the blood running hot just under the surface. The world was all of a sudden quieter, blurry, muffled, as though he were sensing it through a fog. There was no pain, but pain would have been preferable to this numbness.

“I can’t see,” he said, not knowing why exactly, only that it was somehow true. “I can’t—I can’t see.” He sucked in a gasping breath. His face crumpled.

“What do you mean, can’t see? That was a low voltage. All you should have felt was a sharp sting. Like a swat. If you were to feel anything at all.” Father said, and though his tone was terse and no-nonsense as ever, Ben did not think he was imagining an underlying hint of concern.

Ben shook his head, hands shaking against their tentacles too scared to touch them with more than the slightest pressure. “It didn't--didn't hurt really, but something's wrong." One of the tentacles reached out blindly, shying back soon as though it had thought better of coming into contact with the surface of the cage again. “My eyes are fine, but something just went dark.” 

“Potential unknown sensory organ,” Father muttered. “Possibly electroreceptors. Unexpectedly integrated sensory experience between organisms—will need more scans to determine extent and nature of linked nervous systems.” He pondered his notes for a moment, before looking up, his face impassive as ever when he said, “I misjudged the distress that would cause you, Number Six. I hadn’t been aware of how much you share with your...other. It was not my intention to harm you, only to facilitate your control by teaching the creature to equate disobedience with punishment. I stand by that tactic, but I will have to reconsider how best to employ it. We’ll take tissue samples and scans later in the lab. For now, you may go and collect yourself.” 

Ben gulped and shut his eyes. It wasn’t difficult to make the thing go back under his skin; without anything to vent its anger and fear on, it was glad to hide and nurse its wounds. The door opened, and he hurried out.

He kept his eyes on the ground as he walked past his siblings. 

“Ben,” Allison said, leading the others as they trailed after him. “Are you...” 

“I’m fine.” 

She reached out for his arm, but he pulled away before she could touch him. He couldn’t quite meet her eyes, but he felt bad for being rude when she was only checking on him, so he made his tone soft and tried to smile. “Really, I’m okay. It didn't really hurt, just scared me, you know? Dad didn’t mean it.” 

“Still, that wasn’t...he shouldn’t have done that,” Allison blurted. 

They were all quiet for a moment, feeling as though all the air had been sucked out of the room. Then Luther spoke, his voice low and sure. “No, you heard Dad. It was for Ben’s own good. For all of us. He wasn’t hurting Ben, he was helping him by hurting the thing.” 

“How can you say that?” Diego said, his brow scrunched. “He hurt Ben, too.” 

Ben tried to keep smiling, staring down at his shoes. “Luther is right, guys. Dad knows what he’s doing.” 

Luther patted Ben on the back, overly-gentle to compensate for his strength, and that never stopped endearing him to Ben, even many years later, when cracks appeared in his shining image of Father and his brother. Luther gave him a careful one-armed hug and let him go. 

“No one ever said it was going to be easy, having powers,” Luther said. 

That was true enough, Ben supposed. But he hadn’t exactly asked for this. And he couldn’t help but think that Luther had it just a little easier. Then he scolded himself for thinking so; it wasn’t a competition, and if it was, it wasn’t one worth winning, seeing who had the worst powers. His siblings were on his side. They had to be. He didn’t want to think of what it would be like, to be doing this alone. 

Vanya came running up. “What happened?” she said, catching her breath. “Dad wouldn’t let me watch with the others.” She peered at Ben, growing concerned. “Hey, are you okay?” 

“Give him a little space, Vanya,” Five murmured. 

She looked at Five, then at Ben. “But what happened?” 

“Just training,” Ben said. “Everything’s fine.” 

“Maybe you should go see Mom,” Klaus said. When Ben just looked quizzically at him, Klaus went on. “You got hurt, maybe she can make sure you’re okay.” 

“I didn’t get hurt,” Ben said. "I feel fine now."

“But you said...” 

“Just drop it,” Ben snapped, immediately feeling guilty but wanting nothing more than for them all to just go away and leave him alone for a few minutes, instead of staring. “What’s she going to do, put a band-aid on it? Let it get hurt, I don’t care.” 

“But it hurt you, too—” 

“It doesn’t matter. Dad wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t for the best. Can we not talk about this anymore?” 

“Okay,” Klaus mumbled, sounding unconvinced, but nobody tried to stop Ben when he turned and trudged the rest of the way to his room alone. 

Of course, he was never really alone. 

At the end of the book, the boy didn’t destroy the shadow. He called its name and it called his name, and it was the same name, and then “two voices were one voice” and he “took hold of his shadow” and they were joined and made whole, and the boy wept. 

The rage came fast and forceful, overtaking him in seconds. He’d thrown the book across the room before he recognized that his arm was even moving, and the sound of it hitting the wall replayed in his mind a few times before he registered what he’d done. Then he sat very, very still, listening to his body, to the quickly cooling flare of wrath that was dissipating now and leaving him hollow. 

That couldn’t be him. It couldn’t be he who got so angry—that was the thing. That was the monstrous rage he needed to control. It wasn’t him, it was the Horror, and he needed to overpower it, make it submit, beat it down and control it. Not like that stupid boy in the book who hadn’t slayed anything, had been weak and passive and in the end had only stood there, embracing a shadow, as if that solved anything or rid the world of darkness. That wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. He didn’t understand. 

His own anger frightened him, so he disconnected it from himself, and gave it to Them. 

A single tentacle reached back out, and he held his breath as it nudged its smooth back gently against his cheek, like an alien caress, like it wanted to soothe him. The feeling was returning to it with a feeling like pins and needles all over beneath his skin, and he sighed with relief, not having recognized until that moment what a fearful loss he had suffered when he'd thought that the thing’s special way of sensing the world was damaged. 

Ben had never wanted to be a hero; he had only wanted to stand beside them, and be made good by association. Least of all his siblings did he desire the path their father had laid out for them. What he wanted was to belong. 

Later, everyone would admit what they had known all along. Later, they’d say all the signs had been there, and anyone could’ve guessed where the road he was on would lead. Naïve, his Father had called him. Easily manipulated, according to Vanya’s book, and so led along into Father and Luther’s games. They’d blame Luther if they blamed anyone, or else blame something in Ben’s nature, as though he’d passively walked into his fate, all gullible and credulous, like a lamb to slaughter. 

That didn’t give him much credit, he thought. He felt the Horror’s bottomless rage and ceaseless hunger every day, right at the center of himself. One day he surrendered, that was all. 

His siblings didn’t understand surrender. They didn’t understand how, when you’ve been told domination is the only way to be safe and good all your life, submission was a kind of mutiny. Weakness became strength. He and the Horror could never win or lose against each other. His siblings understood everything in terms of combat—as he did, too, for a long time. 

All his life, he’d thought of surrender as death, but it wasn’t anything like that at all. 

It just took a while to figure that out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The Wizard of Earthsea](https://archive.org/stream/wizardofearthsea01legu/wizardofearthsea01legu_djvu.txt) by Ursula K. Le Guin is a pretty good book. Maybe you've read it? Or had another story that felt especially significant to you when you were growing up? Sadly, I wasn't really patient enough when I read it at a young age to really enjoy the story--I didn't think it was thrilling enough and I wasn't a big fan of high fantasy. I think I'd like to read it again some day.


	3. Number Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Formative early 2000's Animal Planet series. If you had cable growing up in the U.S. during that time, maybe you recall these terrible, outdated gems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! I have really enjoyed writing this story, and I hope you're enjoying reading it.
> 
> tw in this chapter for multiple instances of non-graphic animal death. It's all either off-screen/over in a sentence with next to no description, but thought I'd put that out there. There are descriptions of bot flies. It's not that I'm trying to be gross, it's just that, well...writing this has been an exercise in telling myself the story of what it means to be repulsed by something. It's something I think a lot about and it's one of the reasons I wanted to know more about Ben's character, even if I had to make it up myself. He's the perfect perspective through which to think about certain horror tropes through an entirely different lens than usual.
> 
> I could talk about that all day long, but that's not what anybody's here for, so on to the story. Thank you so much for reading, I love you! If you enjoy the story or have a bone to pick with me, comments/critique are my lifeblood.

When the Hargreeves children were twelve, they decided it was time for them to get a pet. They had periodically begged and bargained with Father, of course to no avail.

Allison was the most vocal in their pet crusade. Ben sometimes wondered if her devotion to the cause had less to do with her wanting a pet, and more to do with her wanting to have her way, and get what she figured she deserved. 

He had his reasons for thinking so, as one day she called an unofficial meeting in the library. 

“All the other kids our age have pets,” she said. “I know the answer has always been no in the past, but it’s about time Dad got with the program.” 

Diego scoffed. “Since when has Dad cared about what other kids our age are doing?” 

“If we present it to him like it’s a lesson for us in responsibility, maybe he’ll see sense.” 

“It’s never gonna happen, Three. Do you even care about a pet, or do you just hate that Dad said no?” 

Allison’s face flushed. “I just don’t think it’s fair!” 

“Dad said no,” Luther said. “I don’t think he’ll change his mind.” 

“Unless you rumor him,” Klaus said, earning him a glare from Luther. 

“No.” 

“A dog would be pretty cool,” Diego said. 

“Or a cat. Or a rabbit. Or a bird,” said Ben. He hadn’t spent any more time around animals than his siblings, but the idea of a pet sounded fun, in theory. 

“So that’s three votes yes,” Allison said. “And one no. Four?” 

“I want a pet, but only if it's against the rules for us to have one.” 

“Five? Seven?” 

Five shook his head. “Whatever you do, don’t expect me to help take care of it.” 

“I think it sounds fun,” Vanya said, “but I don’t think Dad will go for it...” 

“What kind of pet would it be?” Ben asked. He was more interested now in fantasizing about the different pets they could have than he was in actually getting one. He agreed with Luther—there was no way Father would allow it. Besides, weren’t they all too busy with training and classes to take good care of a pet? It was a big responsibility, taking care of a helpless creature. Pets were cute and all, but he'd always felt weird about them, and other animals in captivity. Except in rare cases, it didn't seem like it was for their own good.

“Something small, so we can hide it,” Klaus said. 

“We are not getting a secret pet!” Luther said. 

“All right, all right,” Allison sighed. “Don’t get all worked up.” 

But that very night at dinner, she came to Father with a query. Any of them were free to approach him with a request at any time, be it they were willing to engage like adults and present an eloquent case for themselves. He encouraged debate, saying it would strengthen their will and prepare them for life as adults.

“Father,” she said, “We are twelve years old now, and we are ready to take on the responsibility of caring for a pet.” 

“Is this your request, Number Three, or do your siblings share your desire for more responsibility?” 

Allison looked around the table, raising her brows and waiting for them to back her up. Luther stared stone-faced at his plate while Five didn’t bother sparing a glance, absorbed with cutting his chicken into even squares and keeping his peas from touching his mashed potatoes, while Klaus did the very opposite and was combining his vegetables into a slurry. 

“Training a guard dog could be a good lesson for us,” Diego said. “Maybe a Rottweiler. It could protect the house.” 

“I can assure you, a dog will add nothing to house security we don’t already have,” Father said. 

Allison looked at Ben, her eyes demanding him to speak up. Ben squirmed. He didn’t want Father’s attention on him, especially not when it was clear that Allison was on the side of a losing proposition. He lowered his eyes, ashamed but unwilling to speak up. 

Then Luther said, “It could be a team-building exercise. Sharing responsibility to care for a pet.” 

“Do you really have such a low estimation of your abilities, Number One, that you need a dog to teach your team for you?” 

Luther looked down. “No, sir.” 

Allison again made angry eyes at Ben. “Coward,” she mouthed. 

He seethed. The thing’s anger burned low in his chest. Coward? Because he didn’t want to face Dad’s disapproval all to prop up her little game? 

It rankled him because he was afraid she was right. He cleared his throat, but his voice still came out meek and small. “Maybe caring for a pet would...would be good for us, even if we could learn those lessons another way. Especially if we adopt one from a shelter, we’d be giving it a good home. Sir.” 

Father only glanced at Ben for a moment, but that was enough to make him shrink in his seat. “Don’t be sentimental, Number Six, it’s unbecoming. I’m afraid if pity alone were enough to save all the orphans in the world, there’d be little need for this house. And besides. I’d have thought you would have had more than enough of training wild animals. You can understand my reservations, then, about entrusting another to your care, well-intentioned though it may be. You know how much I value good intentions—I don’t.” 

Ben paled. He knew he should have just kept his mouth shut. He knew Allison was trying to catch his eye, but he refused to look at her. He’d only spoken because of her, but trying to please her hadn’t been worth Father’s rebuke. So he was a coward anyway, in the end. Always giving in, one way or another.

They could feel the tiny heart beating in the walls. The Horror was growing bigger. He rolled over again in bed, one arm wrapped around his stomach, the other pressing his pillow over his ear, which did absolutely nothing to muffle the insistent pumping of the heartbeat. 

_But why does his heart not stop beating? Why does it not stop?_

He wished he had not read the collection of Poe Vanya had lent him before bed. She had dark tastes in reading material, and he didn’t have the heart to tell her that he just wasn’t always in the mood for another horror story. Have the heart! That was funny. The Horror roiled beneath his skin and he clutched his stomach tighter. It would not be quiet, it would not be still. It would not let him forget the prickling he felt all over from the pulsing of that small, quick heart. 

They hadn’t been allowed out in days. He kept Them on a tight leash these days. To prove what, and to whom, he wasn’t sure anymore. He only felt that if he stopped, there would be no going back. He was sixteen years old. What he wanted was his privacy. What he wanted was one moment alone in his body. Instead he was up all night, pacing around in his mind, exhausted and hungry, getting delirious and starting to sound like the madman in “The Tell-Tale Heart.” 

He might have gone to Klaus on a night like this, when they were children. Even one or two years ago he still might have gone on a night like this. But things changed. Klaus had smoked a bowl all on his own and far be it from Ben to deprive his brother of a good night’s rest, when he knew in what short supply those were for Klaus. And what could Klaus do anyway that Ben would find any comfort in, when he couldn’t stand anymore to talk about Them, didn’t want to think of Them, was entirely sick of being Their keeper? 

“I hate you,” he muttered, getting out of bed, hunched over his midsection and shuffling out of the room. He let Them guide their body down the hall, down the stairs. It was half past one and the house was dark and still. Everyone was present and accounted for; he could feel their hearts beating, too, but theirs he was used to, theirs didn’t make the Horror stir. 

Small mercies, he thought. Be grateful. 

He tried to be. He managed it, most of the time. Not so well, on nights like this. 

He didn’t bother turning the kitchen light on. He didn’t need it to find his way in the dark. He tapped on the walls, listening to gauge the depth of the space behind them, pressed his palms against them, because for some reason, that helped. Then he stopped and considered what it was he was doing and turned away in disgust. He got some bread out of the cupboard and slapped together a cold sandwich, scarfing half of it down in anger, as if to bludgeon the Horror’s hunger into receding, before he got back up and went back to listening and feeling around the room. He got down on the ground and opened the cabinets below the sink, his senses narrowing in on the heartbeat. He had found it. A tentacle shot out of his body, punching clean through the back of the cabinet and the dry wall behind it into the space inside the wall, where it caught the rat and squeezed. He felt it latching on and drinking through its suckers as it disappeared back through his torso. He leaned his forehead against the cool counter and squeezed his eyes shut, his heart pounding, bile churning in his stomach. He groaned. The Horror, sensing his distress, continued shifting around, unappeased even though it had eaten. So he had suffered for nothing. 

The kitchen light came on and he gasped, a hand flying up to shield his eyes. 

“Holy shit!” Diego yelped, one hand flying up to press against his chest. 

“Oh my god, it’s just Ben,” Vanya said, laughing, a release of nervous tension. 

He peered at them through his fingers. They were dressed in pajamas and looking more energetic than they had any right to be at this hour, he thought. Recently they’d been spending at least one night a week staying up to ungodly hours, listening to music or practicing, Vanya on her violin or piano and Diego on the bass. It was about the strangest and unlikeliest arrangement he could imagine among his siblings, short of Five and Klaus starting a book club together, but somehow it worked, and they seemed to enjoy themselves, even if they didn’t hang out much outside their jam sessions. 

“Um...” he said. He straightened his disheveled shirt and tried to resist the urge to look at the hole in the cabinet. Great. This was really shaping up to be a banner night for him, one for the books. 

Vanya looked at the half-eaten sandwich on the counter, then back at him. “I see we weren’t the only ones looking for a midnight snack.” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“Are you all right, man? You look like, spooked.” 

“Are you having trouble sleeping?” Vanya said, her voice full of sympathy. She stepped forward, then stopped, her gaze fixed on the floor. 

Ben swallowed. “Yeah.” Shielding their view of the inside of the cabinet with his body and one of the open doors, he pushed a bucket of cleaning supplies in front of the hole in the wall and closed the cabinet. “You guys...practicing? That’s cool. How’s that going?” 

“Pretty good, you know... What’re you doing on the floor, man?” 

He swallowed the lump in his throat. “There was a rat in the wall.” 

“A rat in the—oh, man, you saw a rat, like, in the kitchen? Where’d it get into the wall at?” Diego said, grimacing. “Through there? I guess we’ll have to tell Mom, she’s probably got some traps somewhere we can set. Lemme see.” 

Ben stood up and stepped back. Maybe he could just walk out, and they could all chalk this up to a lucid dream and never speak of it again. Why was Diego suddenly Mr. Exterminator anyway? It was like he had to vent his need to take charge wherever he could, even where it wasn’t needed. Who cared about one stupid rat in the wall? The city was full of them. 

Diego laughed. “Holy shit, man, there’s totally a hole in the back of this cabinet, right into the wall. That’s...uh...huh...a rat made that, I guess?” 

“There’s...you’ve got a little...” Vanya trailed off, nodding at Ben and looking at a spot on the floor. He looked. There was a single bright red drop of blood on the white tiles, and two smaller droplets on his arm. 

Ben coughed and crossed his arms, rubbing his hands up and down over his still faintly rippling skin. She saw the thing moving underneath him and for a second her eyes widened in horror and comprehension, and then she wiped her face blank and looked away.

She was getting too good at that, lately. He thought he'd used to be able to tell what she was thinking with ease. Not anymore.

Or maybe it wasn't her. Maybe his mind was going strange on him. Would he wake up one day unable to read human faces anymore, everything once familiar turned alien and uncanny overnight?

“Some rat!” Diego said, chuckling. “Jesus. Gonna need like, a MacDaddy trap for this guy, freaking punching holes in the wall. What is it, a goddamn ROUS? How big was it, Six?” 

“Er...normal rat size.” 

“Gross,” Diego said. “Yeah, we’ll ask Mom for some traps tomorrow.” 

“Or you could...not. Do that.” 

“What? Why not?” 

“There’s no rat, okay? Forget about the rat, it’s gone. As far as anybody needs to know this didn’t happen and you don’t know anything about the hole in the wall and you’ve never seen it before and neither have I.” 

Diego eased the cabinet doors shut, staring at Ben in wary surprise. “Oh...kay. You sure you’re feeling all right, Ben?” 

“I’m going to bed now,” he said, picking up his plate and heading for the trash. 

“Aren’t you going to eat that?” Diego said, watching him throw the rest of his sandwich away. 

“I’m not hungry.” 

“Yeah, seeing a rat in the kitchen would sort of kill my appetite, too. I might just go to bed, Vee.” 

“Me too,” she said, not looking at either of them. 

“I’m sorry,” Ben blurted. 

They both looked at him in confusion. 

“What’re you saying that for?” Diego said. 

“I...I don’t know.” 

Diego frowned. “C’mon upstairs and get some sleep, you look all...squirmy,” he said, giving the crawling skin on Ben’s arms a quick, cursory glance. “If you’re still not feeling good tomorrow, you should tell Mom.” 

“Okay,” Ben said, just to pacify his brother, whose genuine, oblivious concern was entirely too much right now, was about to break him. 

“Come on, little bro, you’re up way past your bedtime,” Diego joked, giving Ben a slight shove toward the stairs. When he nudged Ben past Vanya, she shrank back against the counter, giving him space and going still. He pretended not to notice that, nor the way she wouldn’t meet his gaze. 

In the morning, the spot of blood on the tile was gone. Diego wouldn’t drop the damn rat conversation, bringing it up again during their evening free time, forcing Ben to get all cagey about it and claim he’d been out of it the night before, half-asleep and maybe imagining things, all while studiously avoiding looking at Vanya. 

He didn’t know what she suspected, and didn’t want to. 

Hargreeves never went in the kitchen, which bought him a little time before detection. 

“I need you to help me hide a hole in the wall.” 

Klaus stared at him, a grin slowly sliding across his face. “There’s a story here, there must be.” 

“The story is, there’s a hole in the wall, and I need you to help me cover it up before Dad finds out about it.” 

“And what about me screams ‘master craftsman’ to you?” Klaus said, gesturing to himself. 

“Please, Klaus, come on...I’ll tell you if you promise to help.” 

“Again, not sure what I have to offer in the construction department, but let’s see what we can do.” 

They didn’t end up fixing the hole in the wall at all; they just ignored the criticism of a ghost Klaus found who claimed to have had a hand in building part of the original house and spackled the chunk of missing cabinet back in place. 

“It looks like shit, but hey, who’s down here really looking anyway?” Klaus said. 

Ben groaned. “Mom will totally be able to tell...” 

“Look, just shove all this cleaning shit in front of it. What even is this stuff? Nobody’s touched this stuff in forever, look at the dust on it. She’s observant, but only about the things Dad needs her to be. You know, like us. I don’t think anybody’s gonna notice this anytime soon. Relax,” Klaus said, patting Ben on the back. 

Ben ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Thank you.” 

“I didn’t really do shit, but you’re welcome. I’m always available for moral support, so if you ever need a cheerleader while you hide more suspicious evidence of home destruction, you know who to call.” 

“We ate a rat,” Ben said, lowering his hands and staring at his brother. To his enduring credit, Klaus just blinked owlishly at him. “The Horror did, I mean. It was in the wall and They ate it.” 

Klaus didn’t look away. “That bad, huh?” 

Ben shrugged. “It’s been worse.” 

“I didn’t know. I feel like I used to know, when you were having a hard time handling it.” 

“I’m handling it,” Ben said, too quick and harsher than he meant to. “It’s under control.” 

“I didn’t mean like that, Ben. I meant when you’re having a hard time handling things, like, emotionally.” 

“Well. I’m fine.” 

Klaus rolled his eyes, leaning back against the cabinet. They were both still sitting on the kitchen ground. “Please don’t go all macho on me and act like you don’t have feelings, okay? That’s Luther’s shtick, it isn’t you. 

“Luther has feelings.” 

“Yeah, I know, but you try telling him that. Look, all I’m saying is...I feel like lately, we don’t talk as much about real shit. And it’s not just me. You’ve been sort of...guarded. With everyone.” 

“Maybe that’s for the best.” 

“Best for who? Who do you think that helps?” 

“Well, you haven’t exactly been the most _present_ all the time, either.” 

Klaus looked down, fidgeting with his jacket zipper. “I guess things have been a little much lately, for both of us. Look, I...I never pretended to be well-adjusted, in the slightest, but I’d like to try and not end up an emotionally stunted wreck as much as possible? What do I need to do here? I know I'm not perfect, I mean Christ, believe me I know, and I know you probably won't believe me when I say this, but I'm...I'm really trying to do the best with what I got right now, okay? What can I do to make things better? If you even want that, I mean.” 

Ben understood why his brother tried to dull his powers. He didn't blame him for it, not in the slightest, and he didn't want Klaus to think his reticence was some kind of punishment. It wasn't. “I believe you. Of course I do. I know it’s not easy on you, either. I do want to talk more. I miss that.” 

Klaus grinned. “We’re a couple of sappy screwups, aren’t we?” 

“Whatever. You’re right—it's better than bottling everything up.” 

“You kidding? Bottling things up until the inevitable and devastating explosion _isn’t_ a great coping mechanism? You’re blowing my mind right now.” 

Ben scoffed, bumping his shoulder against Klaus’. “It’s sort of becoming a family trend, isn’t it?” 

“I don’t know, Vanya and Diego are doing strangely well now that they’ve discovered the joys of shitty garage music. Maybe we should join them.” 

“Yeah? What would we play?” 

“I’m thinking accordion for me—no, triangle. No, tambourine. You’re on the keyboard. You could play like, what, at least three keyboards at once. One man band over here. Maybe that’s what your buddy needs, a creative outlet for his teen angst. Geez, Ben, let the poor guy express himself.” 

Ben rolled his eyes. “You’re ridiculous.” 

“I’m a visionary. Seriously, think about it.” 

“Lately I wish I could just tear Them out of me.” 

Klaus was quiet for a beat. “Oh. Ben...” 

“It’s fine. Forget it.” 

“Talk to me. Please.” 

“I hate Them. I hate feeling Them, hate having Them touching me, hate seeing Them. I hate feeling how...how _angry_ They get sometimes. Like They could just tear this whole house down and that still wouldn’t be enough. Shit.” 

“I feel like that sometimes. Angry enough to start tearing this place up.” Ben looked at his brother. Klaus’ face was tranquil, serious. “Don’t you ever get angry yourself, Ben?” 

Ben looked down, swallowing a lump in his throat. “No. That’s Their anger.” 

“It isn’t wrong, to feel angry sometimes.” 

“That kind of anger _is_ wrong,” he said, his voice raising as he clenched his fists in the bunched material at the front of his sweater, pressing them against his stomach and drawing his knees to his chest. “Don’t you get it? I don’t get to feel like that— _They_ feel like that, and I have to control it, contain it, or else who knows what They’d do, who They’d hurt? It’s dangerous. It’s bad.” 

“Not all anger is bad, and it sure as hell doesn’t make you bad if something about all this gets you angry! Do you think something’s wrong with me, because I’m angry?” Ben glanced at his brother in surprise, and Klaus went on. “Look, I might not go around sulking and throwing tantrums like some people I could name, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get mad as hell sometimes. And honestly, I think that’s a good thing. I’m proud of myself, that I still feel enough to get angry about some of the shit that goes down here. It means I haven’t numbed myself out all the way yet, it means I still care and I haven’t just rolled over and accepted everything. I get you think you don’t get to be angry, like you have to be perfect or something, but it’s not true, and it doesn’t make you bad, or dangerous, or any of this other crap you’ve absorbed because Dad is obsessed with control. I won’t pretend I get what it’s like, feeling what They feel right under the surface all the time—I’m just saying, it can’t be good for you, pretending you don’t feel certain things, putting all of that on Them. It’s robbery. It’s robbing yourself of a whole side of being a person, which yeah, can be a shitty side sometimes, but it’s still you. You get to be a person. Okay?” 

Ben pressed his fists against his stomach hard, his eyes stinging. “Okay. But it’s hard.” 

“I can’t argue with that.” 

"I don't know if I know how."

"You're not alone there."

“It’s like...” he paused, swallowing, his voice thick and choked. “It’s like I feel like, if I could just rip Them out, then I’d--then I’d really be a person. I’d be good, and all the bad stuff would be gone, and I’d be free, and I wouldn’t have to worry about a thing, and I’d finally be myself?” 

“I wonder sometimes what I’d be like if I’d never seen them. Would I act different? Think different? I’d be somebody else. A better person, less fucked up, and I’d...I’d just do everything, you know? But then I have to stop myself, you know, because I _do_ see them. That other person doesn’t exist, he’s not out there, all like, perfect and whole and undamaged. There’s just me.” Klaus let his head thump against the cabinet. “And that’s...that’s sort of hard to accept, but I think, once we do accept it...it’ll feel really good. Like, okay. So this is what I’ve got to work with, now what? What am I going to do now that I’ve stopped thinking about what if?” 

They sat side by side on the kitchen floor for a long time, not saying another word. 

The hole was half a foot deep and two feet wide. 

“How much deeper do we have to go?” Klaus whined. 

“We have to get to sea level,” Diego said. 

“How far is that?” 

“Just keep digging, all right? I’m gonna go ask Mom for some shovels,” he said, standing and dusting his hands off before racing across the yard. 

They were four years old and trying to dig their way to the ocean, something Diego was sure they could do, based on a nature show they’d watched that week during down time. 

Four sighed, and halfheartedly moved some more dirt aside. “I knew we should’ve built a fort instead,” he grumbled. 

The soil smelled good. Six didn’t mind digging. It was much less strenuous than some of the other games his siblings wanted to play. He didn’t have to tire himself out or get jostled and feel his skin squirming when all he wanted was to rest. He didn’t know where the others got all their energy from. His seemed to just drain away. 

He picked up a handful of dirt and let it fall through his fingertips, leaving tiny clumps of it on the ends of his fingers. He knew what he wanted to do, and did so without thinking. The dirt tasted earthy and strangely metallic. He took his finger out of his mouth and picked up some more. Maybe this was what he’d been hungry for all this time, and just hadn’t known it. 

He looked up when Klaus giggled, and saw his brother dropping a pinch of dirt into his own mouth. Klaus laughed. “Gross,” he said, delighted, licking dirt off his palm. “Now I know how the worms feel. All they eat is dirt,” he said, pulling a worm out of the earth and dangling it in Ben’s face. “Did you know worms have five hearts?”

Ben tilted his head. “No,” he said, curious. He held out one hand. “Can I feel?” Klaus dropped the worm into his hand, and Ben smiled. “They really do.” 

Klaus laughed. “I didn’t feel it had five hearts, dummy, I saw it on a show.” 

“You can’t feel them?” 

Klaus stared at him. “You’re not gonna trick me like that, Six.” 

“I’m not playing a trick,” Ben said, now concerned for his brother. “Maybe you should tell Mom.” 

“Tell her what?” Klaus laughed, picking up another worm. He looked at it, then at Ben, staring at the pale undersides of his arms as he held the worm in cupped hands. “Maybe _you_ should tell Mom.” 

“What for?” 

“That,” Klaus said, pointing at the subtle shifting beneath the skin on Ben’s arm. 

Ben covered it with one of his hands. “That’s normal.” 

“Nuh-uh. No way.” 

“Yes way.” 

“It looks like a worm,” Klaus said, waving the worm in Ben’s face. 

Ben flushed. “It’s not.” 

“How do you know, though? It could be eating your blood!” 

Ben swatted his brother’s hand out of his face. “Shut up.” 

“I’m serious.” 

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Ben said, standing up and brushing his pants off. “I’m gonna leave if you don’t quit it.” 

“I’m just saying...I still think you should tell. What if?” 

Footsteps pounding across the grass. Ben turned, and there was Diego sprinting out of the house towards them, gardening shovels in hand, Allison following after him. 

“Hey Three,” Klaus said, grinning. “Check this out.” 

He tossed the worm at her, and she shrieked and smacked it away. He cackled. “Six, gimme the other one, quick.” 

Ben shrank back, cupping the worm in his hands, while Allison smacked Klaus on the back of the head. 

They didn’t manage to dig to the sea that day. Or on any other day, for that matter.

Whenever it was Diego’s turn to choose the channel they watched during their rare TV time, they almost invariably ended up watching Animal Planet. If it was Shark Week, they’d all trade their turns with him, knowing it was the only way to keep him from miserably complaining the whole time if they watched anything else. 

They were seven years old and crowded on the couch together, Ben squished between Five and Four, with Luther and Vanya on the other side, and Allison and Diego sprawled on the ground. “The Most Extreme, yes!” Diego crowed, tossing the remote aside. It was one of his favorite shows, a countdown of “extreme” animals in various categories. They’d seen the shark countdown the week before, and now he was obsessed. The title flashed on the TV guide as he clicked it; “The Most Extreme Horrors.” 

“This is gonna be a good one,” he said. 

All in all, Diego’s turn at the TV was generally met favorably by everyone. They all liked watching animal shows, and it was better than the documentaries Five liked, or the live-action Disney channel sitcoms Allison always wanted to watch. The rest of them were usually content to watch whatever cartoon was playing. 

“Be afraid...be very afraid... We’re counting down the top ten most extreme nightmares of nature," the announcer said.

“I think I know who number one is,” Diego muttered. 

Allison smacked him on the back of the head. 

“Ow! Chill out, Three.” 

Ben wasn’t paying attention and pretended not to hear them. Five had a book of crosswords open in his lap, and he was letting Ben help with the horizontal words while he did the vertical. On Five’s other side, Vanya was leaning over and helping too. 

“I think number five across is windmill,” she said. 

“That doesn’t work with number nine down,” Five said, tapping the page. 

“Maybe I got it wrong,” Ben said. “I think I did.” 

Five erased his word and penciled in windmill. 

“Quiet,” Diego said, kicking his leg against Five’s shin. 

“This show is tacky,” Five said. 

“You’re tacky.” 

Five just sighed and looked at his puzzle. 

“Our nightmares may be full of huge, ferocious beasts. But the scariest things...live inside our bodies,” said the television as the picture zoomed in to show a cartoon parasite wriggling around in somebody’s intestine. 

Parasitic worms took the top spot. Not because they could hunt and eat people, like some of the other animals on the show, but because there was apparently nothing more repulsive than the idea of sharing your body with something else, even something that wasn’t harming you, as several of the species in the show were said not to. Some of them even helped their host, apparently, a detail Ben filed away for later reflection.

“Cracker?” Klaus asked, waving the sleeve of graham crackers over the crossword puzzle. Ben took one and so did Five, absentmindedly holding it in his hand as though he didn’t realize it was there, too focused on the puzzle. 

“Yes!” Diego said, as the channel rolled over to its next program and the title “Monsters Inside Me” lit up the screen. He turned to shoot the rest of them a glare over his shoulder. “Nobody tell Mom,” he hissed. 

They’d only caught a snippet of the show once before and had all watched, horrified and unable to look away until Mom found them and made them change the channel, saying they were going to give themselves nightmares. It was all about people contracting rare, deadly infectious diseases and parasites. They’d all felt oddly guilty watching the show, as though they knew they were looking at something they shouldn’t be—or at least, Ben had, and assumed his siblings felt the same, because no one had argued with Mom. But ever since, several of them had been determined to catch the show again, drawn in by the forbidden. With episode titles like "Something's Eating My Dreams," "There's a Worm Crawling in My What?" and "All I Got For Christmas Is Brain Surgery,” who could blame them for wanting to catch such quality programming? 

“Can’t we watch something else?” Vanya whined. “I don’t wanna see this.” 

“Cover your eyes then,” Diego said. 

“Cracker?” Klaus said, leaning down and shoving the crackers at Diego’s face. 

Diego swatted them away. “How can you eat while this is on?” he said, grimacing. 

Ben tried to pretend like he wasn’t watching and focus on the puzzle, but in truth, he couldn’t look away even though he wanted to. On the screen the dramatic reenactment was playing out as a man felt something move across his eyeball, and asked a friend to check. The friend shone a light in his eye, and a look of comical horror crossed his face as he dropped the light, the camera zooming in to watch it bounce and roll across the floor before panning up to show the worm flicking across the inner side of the man’s eye, slithering out of sight. 

Diego and Allison cried out in delighted disgust. “Oh, man! That is nasty!” 

“Can you imagine?” Allison said. 

They shrieked and giggled as the surgeon removed the worm from the inflamed, bloodshot eye, its pale, fragile body wriggling in the air. Ben’s mouthful of graham cracker felt like a lump of sawdust in his mouth. He choked it down and sat still, trying to be quiet enough to disappear. 

Vanya whined. “Please, guys, I don’t wanna watch this!” 

“Then go in your room!” Diego said. 

Vanya pouted, but stayed seated. 

“This is all just cheap shock tactics to get views,” Five said.

“So?” Diego said. “Wait, listen, there’s science and stuff.” 

The show began explaining the life cycle of the bot fly, before cutting to the dramatic reenactment and interviews with the woman who’d been infected on vacation and came home to larvae erupting from her skin. Diego and Allison gave more cries of delighted disgust. 

“Oh, man,” Luther said, grimacing. 

“Seriously guys, come on!” Vanya said. 

The screen showed the fly larvae writhing beneath her skin before burrowing out, fat and white and limbless, making her flesh bulge and distort. Trying to remove the larvae, the show said, would only lead to likely infection as their bodies broke off while still inside and rotted inside. The only thing to do was to allow them to grow and mature, and leave on their own. 

“I’m never going to South America,” Allison said, shuddering. 

“That doesn’t mean your safe, there’s probably another kind that lives right here,” Diego said. 

Ben’s stomach flip-flopped and he felt the skin there rippling. Did the thing stir because he was queasy, or was its stirring the cause of the nausea, or both? He wrapped one arm around his middle, slow and careful, praying nobody noticed, and pressed his arm across his stomach, as though he could hold himself together. 

“It’s kind of cool if you think about it,” Klaus said. 

“Of course you think it’s cool,” Allison said. “Weirdo.” 

“Gimme a graham cracker,” Diego said, twisting around. “Pass it here.” 

“Me too,” said Allison, sitting up. 

Klaus, unable to reach Diego’s grasping hand, passed the crackers to Ben, who held them out. Diego and Allison both snatched at them, trying to grab them before the other one could, only for them both to recoil with little gasps that turned into nervous laughter as they glanced at each other, sheepish. Ben dropped the crackers and snatched his arm back, wrapping it around his stomach. 

“What are you both squealing for?” Luther said. “What’s the matter with you?” 

“Nothing, nothing,” Allison said. 

“Just jumpy ‘cause of the show, sorry Six, nothing personal,” said Diego. 

His whole body felt cold and pale and the thing was squirming all over now. Five felt it where their arms were touching and glanced over at him, and Ben tried to move away, drawing his shoulders in and making himself small. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Vanya. 

“Hey, how much money do you think people get for going on TV?” Diego said. 

Allison’s eyes gleamed. “A lot. And you get to be famous.” 

They grinned at each other. There was nothing mean-spirited in their faces as they both turned to stare at Ben, but he still winced at the attention. 

“What’re you looking at me like that for?” he said. 

“We could put you on the show!” Diego blurted. “You would make like, a million dollars, they’d have to cancel the whole series after ‘cause they’d never be able to follow it up!” 

Ben’s breath hitched in his chest. He wrapped his arm tighter around himself. “That’s not funny.” Then he glanced at Luther, to make sure. If Luther thought it was funny, then he was probably just being too sensitive, like Diego and Allison always said. But Luther was just frowning at both of them. 

“Who said anything about being funny? I’m serious,” Diego said. 

“Yeah, Ben, think about it, you’d be famous,” Allison said, smiling. They were both smiling and he knew they were teasing him but they were acting so nice and friendly about it that he didn’t know how to make them stop. 

“I don’t get it,” he said. If he played dumb maybe they’d get bored of this stupid joke. “You go on the show if you wanna be famous.” 

“But I can’t do this,” she said, grabbing his arm and poking him hard in the stomach—not hard enough to hurt, but enough to make him gasp and jerk and send the thing rippling beneath his skin, all down his arm in a wave of little bumps like marbles rolling underneath his skin. She laughed and dropped his arm when the rippling reached his hand and he yanked it back to his middle, where the skin was still rippling. The thing wasn’t angry; if anything, it had thought she was being playful, and now it wanted more attention, sending tendrils across his torso, poking and tickling. He squirmed. Diego and Allison laughed. 

“That’s wicked, man,” Diego said, grinning. 

“D-don’t do that,” he gasped, wincing at the feeling of it poking and prodding at his insides, roused now from its drowsing and seeking contact. 

“What, this?” Diego said, poking him in the side and yanking his hand back before the thing could even react, just a little too quickly to be lighthearted, as though he were afraid it might grab him. 

Ben shivered as the tendrils spider-webbed across the underside of his skin, thousands of tiny spines poking at him from the inside for a second before sinking back down. His lip wobbled as he fought to keep his face from crumpling while they burst into renewed giggles. The thing wouldn’t be still now, too riled by their teasing and his own distress. 

“Cut that out,” Luther snapped. “Are you trying to make it mad?” 

That made them sober up for a second. “It’s not getting mad, is it, Ben?” Diego said. “Like, you’re all good?” 

“It’s fine,” he said, sniffling and blinking back tears. 

An awkward silence fell over them, so that his uneven breathing as he tried not to cry was all too audible. On screen a mass of worms fluttered inside the chambers of a dog’s heart. Luther appeared to be trying to communicate to Allison and Diego with eye contact alone, glaring at the both of them while Allison glared right back and Diego shifted uncomfortably. 

“Come on, Ben, don’t get all upset, we’re just messing around,” Diego said. 

“I’m not—upset,” he said, his voice hitching. 

When Allison felt guilty, she got angry. He loved his sister very much, but that particular tendency of hers could make her lash out more than he knew she meant to, and she always regretted it later and would be sincere in her apology, but in the moment, her defensive retaliation could hurt. He never knew what to do with her kind of anger. She always wanted a fight, to hash things out. That was her way of working feelings out; get everything out in the open, and move on. His reaction to that was to clam up and shrink away, which only made her angrier. “Can’t you take a joke? Come on, it’s not like it’s a secret or something, are we just supposed to pretend we don’t all see it? If you wouldn’t be so sensitive, it wouldn’t be such a big deal.” 

She looked blurry through the tears he was doing his best not to let fall. "I'm n...I'm not..."

"Then why are you crying?"

"You looked at me like--like those things on the show, and it's your fault, you made it do that," he said, and then he couldn't speak anymore, swallowing back a sob. He shouldn't have said anything at all. She knew exactly what she'd done, and him trying to explain only made him feel small and stupid, like maybe he really was overreacting. But how else could he react, when she'd acted like he was something to be grossed out by?

Allison’s face scrunched up, her hands fisting, and he started to see that her anger was out of proportion to this one instance—this was a much larger guilt. This was a guilt she harbored deep down all the time, because she meant what she’d said—he disgusted her, and she didn’t know what to do about that. 

“What do you expect?” she said, raising her voice, her eyes wet and shining. “It’s not my fault! It’s not fair to expect me to—it’s not fair I have to feel like I’m the bad guy for having a normal reaction! You shouldn’t hold that against me, I can’t stand it, don’t look so sad! Why do you have to be such a baby?” 

“Three!” Luther said. 

“I’m sorry,” Ben said miserably.

“Don’t apologize to me!” she said. “Stop it.” 

He pressed his hand hard into his stomach, wincing. He kept his arm curled around his middle when he stood. “I don’t feel good,” he mumbled, hurrying out of the room without meeting any of their eyes and running up the stairs, where he almost crashed into Pogo. He gasped, the thing rippling across his skin. 

“Sorry,” he said, wiping at the tears on his face. 

Pogo’s eyes widened. “Are you all right?” 

Ben nodded and darted past him, closing himself in his room and crawling under the covers of his bed, shivering as he relaxed his control on the thing and it wreaked havoc on the boundaries of their body, releasing its stored up tension. He trembled and moaned as the queasy feeling intensified, bumps raising across his skin and a single slim tentacle crawling out and flopping off the side of the bed. He curled on his side and squeezed his eyes shut and tried to keep his crying quiet. 

He didn’t know how long he stayed like that. It might have been an hour or a few minutes before the knock came at the door. 

“Ben? It’s Allison,” she called softly. “Can I come in?” 

He groaned. “Not now, Allie.” 

“Please...” 

“I don’t feel good, can’t it wait?” he said, and his voice came out doubled, a scratchy undercurrent to it that was not his own. 

She was quiet on the other side of the door. Then he heard her slump against it and slide down. He could see her sitting there by the way the light was blocked coming under the crack below the door. “You don’t have to let me in...but I’m still going to apologize.” 

He slid off the bed, dragging the sheet with him as he huddled by the door. “You don’t have to. It’s okay.” 

“It’s not okay. I shouldn’t have said those things. You...you know I didn’t mean it.” 

“I know,” he mumbled, even though it was a lie. He knew she was sorry, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t meant what she’d said. It didn't mean he'd imagined the way they looked at him.

“Diego’s going to apologize too, but I told him to wait and let me go first. We thought we were just teasing, but we took it too far. We didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I’m really sorry, Ben. Can you please forgive me?” 

“Yeah. It’s okay.” 

She was quiet for a beat, then she said, “Is...is it our fault you don’t feel good? Did we make it mad?” 

“I’m fine. It isn’t mad. This just happens sometimes.” 

They were quiet for another moment, and then she heaved a sigh and thunked her head against the door. “I sure wish I could give you a hug, to make sure you know I really am sorry and you really do forgive me...” 

He glared at the thing’s tentacle, still coiled up in the blanket, and the ripples still distorting his skin. Then he yanked the door open, almost making Allison fall as she’d been leaning against it. He stared dejectedly at the ground, unwilling to look at her. “Well, go ahead then,” he said, sullen and resigned, almost daring her to do it. 

She looked at him a second, and then carefully wrapped her arms around him. He curved his body away from her, so she was touching as little of him as possible, her arms awkwardly stretched around his shoulders. 

“What kind of hug is that?” she huffed, and then she shuffled closer, until she bumped up against the tentacle still protruding from his stomach. They both held still, holding their breath as it shifted its weight. Ben made a soft noise of pain as he tried to force it to go back in. “It’s okay,” she said, holding him tighter. “I love you, you know. You’re my little brother.” 

“Same age,” he grumbled, but he hugged her back, and it almost felt like everything really was okay now between them. 

But there was a part of him that was still hurt inside, and unwilling to forget, and unable to fully accept an apology she’d forced onto him because she couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t take it. She was used to getting her way, and he didn’t want to be the one denying her. 

She really did care, though. Her warmth was real. If she could occasionally be callous, it was always balanced by her care. Even without using her power, she had a way of making you feel special. Something as simple as a shared glance or a laugh from Allison was like having the world glow a little brighter, just for a moment, as though her charm had rubbed off on you and made you someone beautiful and significant and worth paying attention to. At the same time, getting the cold shoulder from her or a cutting remark could be devastating. She was as good at making people feel comfortable and included as she could be at making them feel small. 

Ben supposed that made sense. You had to take the good with the bad. 

He took what he could get. 

A few weeks after their failed plea to their father for a pet, Ben was walking past the library and heard the sound of excited voices trying to be quiet. Stepping in, he saw Klaus, Diego, and Allison huddled in a circle. 

“What’s going on?” he asked, and they all went quiet. 

Diego shushed him, holding a finger to his mouth and beckoning him forward. “Close the door and c’mere.” 

Ben came forward, and there stood Allison, with a gray rabbit in her arms. 

His eyes went wide and he covered his mouth with his hand. “Oh my god,” he whispered. “It’s so cute.” 

“Isn’t she?” Allison said, stroking the bunny’s back and smiling. 

Ben reached forward, and then pulled his hand back. “Can...can I pet her?” 

“Of course you can. You can hold her, if you want.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah, just be gentle.” 

Allison transferred the bunny to his arms and he cradled it to his chest as he’d seen her do, holding very still. He felt its little heart beating. Its body was so soft and warm against his chest, where he felt the thing stir beneath his skin, responding to the new presence, the warmth, the tiny hammering heartbeat. 

He swallowed, nervous. “Does she look scared?” 

“No, look how calm she is. She’s a pet rabbit, not a wild one. She likes being held.” 

He guessed that rabbit’s hearts just beat fast naturally, then. He relaxed a little, stroking the rabbit’s fur. “She’s so soft.” 

“I know, right?” 

“What’s her name?” 

“I was thinking Number Eight.” 

“Come on, we can think of something better than that,” Klaus said. 

“Where’d you get her?” Ben asked. 

“Yeah, that’s what we’d all like to know,” Diego said. 

Allison bit her lip. “I may have...told this girl at the park that she was mine.” 

Ben gasped. “You stole her?” 

“You were at the park?” Diego said. 

“Hurray, theft!” said Klaus. 

“Allison, how could you?” Ben said. 

“That kid can get another bunny, she just has to ask her parents and they’ll buy her one. But this was the only way for us to get one! It’s only fair. It’s not wrong if it’s fair.” 

“I don’t know...that kid must miss her.” 

“No, I made sure she wasn’t sad about it,” Allison said, which was a lot less reassuring than she intended. 

“What if the bunny misses her old home?” 

“We can give her a better one here, don’t you think?” 

“Stealing is wrong, Three. You can’t use your power like that,” said Diego. 

“Well, what’s done is done. I couldn’t find that kid again to give her back even if I wanted to, so can we just forget about how we got her, and focus on the positives? We have a pet now!” 

The thing was pushing against the skin of his chest, curious about the little creature in his arms. 

“Can somebody take her?” Ben said. “Now?” 

“Sure, give her here,” said Diego, who despite his qualms about how she’d gotten here, looked more than pleased about having the bunny. 

"Gentle," Allison admonished him, watching with a glimmer of worry as he handed the bunny to Diego.

“How are we going to hide her?” Diego asked. 

“Well, for starters, by not telling Luther,” Klaus said. 

“We weren’t even going to tell you right away,” Diego lamented, looking at Ben. “No tattling to Number One, okay?” 

“I don’t tattle. Come on, I don’t want her to get taken away either! But do you really think Luther would tell Dad?” 

“Not on his own, but if Dad suspected, Luther wouldn’t be able to hide it from him.” 

Ben looked down. He couldn’t blame his brother for that. Maybe he did understand why they hadn’t wanted to tell him—he didn’t exactly have the best poker face, either. 

They made a bed for the bunny in a cardboard box Allison kept in her room. She did tell Luther, and Five and Vanya. Despite their general unease with how she’d used her powers and with hiding her from Father, they all loved the bunny and kept her secret. 

If they’d pushed a little more, and proven to Hargreeves that they were determined, they would likely have won and gotten a pet. Father wasn’t against them having pets in principle, he just wouldn’t make it easy on them. It was more an issue of scale than anything else. Klaus and Luther had both had hamsters, and Ben had a goldfish when he was seven. Its name was Jolly Rancher and he had loved it very much, for the month it was with him. He had loved to sit and watch it swimming placidly in its tank, and it had calmed both him and the thing, to look at the light playing across the water. Then one day the thing had reached into the tank and drank Jolly Rancher like it was a juice box, along with most of the water in the tank. 

He’d wept over the unfortunate fish for half an hour or so, until he’d cried himself out. Then he felt okay. He searched himself as deeply as he could, and found no cruelty in what They had done. It had not been an act of carelessness or malice. It had been quick, and the thing had acted on a sincere impulse he couldn’t fault it for, especially when later he sensed that it had, perhaps for the first time, discovered loss all on its own, when they sat and stared at an empty tank, which was still beautiful, but far less so without Jolly Rancher. So he cried a little more, and this time both of them were sad, and that made him feel better somehow, like the thing understood him more now, and while it did nothing at all to subdue its appetite or its instincts, it at least let him know that his feelings had some sway over it as well. He wasn't just a vessel holding it; their connection went both ways.

It was a week before anyone noticed his fish was gone. Vanya came into his room to trade books, and paused to peer into the tank. “Where’s Jolly Rancher?” 

“Gone,” Ben said. 

“Oh, Ben. I’m sorry.” 

“Thanks. It’s okay.” 

“You could’ve told me. We could’ve had a fish funeral.” 

He smiled at her, and she had the grace to drop the subject. 

Inside the cage there was a cardboard box, and in the box there were three white mice scrabbling at the sides trying to climb out. He felt their tiny hearts pitter-patter, like raindrops on a windowpane. Outside Father stood at the ready to take notes. 

“All right, Number Six. You know what to do. See if you can’t be neat this time, if you would.” 

The thing coiled forth from his stomach. He was six years old and its arms were small and spindly and undernourished, but they knew what to do. 

They were not neat. 

He was nine years old and following Father to the training room, where the cage awaited, his head down, staring at the floor and trying not to think. His siblings saw them walking past, saw the cage with three white rabbits inside which Father carried, and all got up and ran over. 

“Look at the bunnies!” Allison cried. 

“Back to your studies, children,” Father said. “You’ve already had your individual sessions for the week.” 

“You got us bunnies?” Diego said, following along with the rest of them. “Really?” 

“No, Number Two.” 

“Where are you taking them?” Vanya asked, trailing behind. “What are they doing here then?” 

Father paused, apparently thinking. Six, still staring at the floor, nearly bumped into his legs. “Would you really like to see?” 

“Yes!” his siblings said, and his blood ran cold. 

“Maybe we should invite your siblings along as spectators this afternoon, Number Six,” Father said, and Six looked up at him, pale and stricken with wide, horrified eyes. Father stared down at him, somewhat puzzled. “Well? Don’t you think that would be a valuable and educational experience for your siblings?” 

“Please,” Six said. “Please, Dad.” 

“Please what? You don’t want them there?” Hargreeves furrowed his brow. In rare moments such as this one, Six saw frightening gaps in Father’s comprehension as the great gulf of Hargreeves’ misunderstanding was laid bare, and he was revealed to be as remote as the moon. Inviting his siblings had not been intended as a threat or a punishment; Father had really thought Six might have no objection.

“Please,” Six said again, and Hargreeves nodded. 

“Very well. Perhaps another time, children.” 

“But what’s Six’s training got to do with the bunnies?” Diego said. 

No one answered him. Six followed Father down the hall, shoulders hunched, eyes fixed downwards, burning under the gazes of his siblings at his back. 

Afterwards he hurried through the house, desperate to get to his room and change his blood-splattered shirt before anybody saw him. 

So of course they were all in the sitting room, waiting for him to come by. 

“Well? Where’s he keeping them?” Allison demanded, stepping into his path. 

Ben had to catch his balance so as not to fall at the abrupt change in momentum as he stopped to avoid running into her. “Huh? Later, Three, I have to—” 

“It’s not fair that you’re the only one who gets to play with them. Don’t you think we should get a turn?” 

“I’m tired, Allie, come on, I—” 

“Allison,” Luther said, and something in his tone made her pause. She took a closer look at Ben. 

“Where are they?” she said. 

He bit his lip, not daring to glance at his other siblings. His stomach twisted. He shrugged. 

Her eyes narrowed. “Tell me.” 

He ducked past her and darted for the stairs, his eyes tearing up. “It’s none of your business so just leave me alone!” 

“I heard a rumor that you told me what happened to the bunnies.” 

He gasped and stopped on the stairs. He wasn’t the only one, several of his siblings responding with sharp gasps of their own. He turned halfway up the stairs to stare down at her, trembling as he tried to resist her compulsion, already knowing it was too late. 

“They’re dead,” he whispered. Her face fell, her eyes widening in horror, anger, disgust. He glared at her, suddenly furious. “How could you?” 

“How could I? How could you!” 

“It’s not my fault, it wasn’t me! Dad said—he told me to—it wasn’t me! You don’t understand anything, just leave me alone!” 

He ran the rest of the way up the stairs and slammed his door. 

Without any valid excuse to skip dinner, he still had to show up and sit at the table with the rest of them. He stared at his plate, focusing on eating instead of his siblings. 

“I can’t believe you’re still hungry.” 

He looked up, at first not sure who was being addressed, until he saw Allison staring at him, her face a mask of composure. His face reddened and he swallowed his mouthful of asparagus with difficulty. He had still been hungry, but not anymore. 

“Stop,” Luther hissed, shooting her a sideways glare. 

He stared down at the table, eaten alive by shame. 

Even his own thoughts were betraying him in metaphor. 

“Number Six. Is dinner not up to your standards?” said Father. 

Six had to think for a second about whether yes or no was the correct response. Father’s rhetorical questions had that affect on him. “No, sir.” 

“Then finish your plate.” 

He forked the rest of his dinner into his mouth mechanically, barely chewing before he forced it down. 

He heard Allison and Luther talking in Luther’s bedroom later that night while he was brushing his teeth. 

“It wasn’t right of you to rumor him. You know it’s not his fault...he did what Dad asked. What else is he supposed to do?” 

“I know, but the bunnies.” 

“I know.” 

“I just forget sometimes, what he is. What he can do, I mean.” 

“He’s our brother. You should apologize.” 

“Okay, I will, I promise...but you get what I’m feeling, don’t you?” 

“Yeah, I do...” 

He closed his door quietly, not wanting to draw their attention. 

He was already half-asleep when his door cracked open, and Klaus crawled onto the bed. 

“Ben? Are you asleep?” 

“No...” 

Klaus got under the blanket. “Can I sleep in here?” 

“Yeah.” They were quiet for a little while, Ben staring listlessly at the wall, darkness graining the room with static. “Nightmares?” 

“Sort of.” 

He twisted to look over his shoulder at his brother, who was staring up at the ceiling. He tossed one of the stuffed animals piled on his side of the bed at Klaus. 

“And sleeping in here helps?” 

“Yeah.” 

They were quiet for a while longer, Ben staring at the darkness, Klaus staring at god only knew what was in the room that only he could see. “Okay,” Ben said at last, snuggling under the covers. 

They had Number Eight for two whole weeks without incident. In the evenings before bed, they would all take turns playing with her in Allison’s room, feeding her what they pilfered from the kitchen and letting her hop around the room. 

Then one night while they were all winding down in the library, Allison came storming down the stairs and into the room. “Where is Eight?” 

They all stared at her, Ben and Vanya looking up from their game of Checkers. 

“You lost her?” Diego said. “Wow, great job, Three.” 

“No, her box is still whole, there’s no way she got out on her own. One of you has her.” 

They all looked around at each other, each looking as confused as the others. 

“If we wanted to play with her, we’d keep her in your room,” Diego said. “We wouldn’t risk taking her out and having someone see her.” 

She narrowed her eyes and looked into each of their faces in turn, as though she could see a lie. Maybe she could. When she looked at him, Ben remembered what had happened just a few days ago. 

He’d knocked on her door before bed, to ask if he could pet Eight one more time for the day. There was no reply, but the door was cracked, so he peered in. The room was empty. He listened, and now sure that she was next door in Luther’s room, went in on his own, reasoning that it was all right since he wasn’t going to do anything but sit on the floor and look at Eight. He pulled her box close and reached in, stroking her soft fur, watching her tiny nose twitch. 

“See?” he whispered, feeling the thing stir, its curiosity piqued. “She’s soft. You have to be gentle with her, like I'm being. I know you can be careful. If you want to come out and pet her someday, you have to be good, so I know you won’t hurt her. She’s a pet, not like the ones Dad let you have. If you’re not gentle, you won’t ever get to see her again, she’ll be gone. Get it?” 

Anger, fear, and hunger were the feelings he most often attributed to the Horror. Of course, those were the feelings he might expect to feel from something that found itself in the thing’s predicament. Beneath all of that, the most stable sense he got from the thing was curiosity. 

The door opened and he jumped, stomach dropping. The thing didn’t like to be startled and he winced as he felt it twisting in his stomach, but he smiled up at Allison and Luther. “Hi. Sorry for going in your room, I was going to ask, but you were busy. I just wanted to pet her one more time today.” 

They both stared at him with wide eyes and he felt himself shrinking under their gaze. “What?” 

“Let me have her,” Allison said, hurrying into the room and lifting Eight out of his arms, more roughly than he’d ever seen her handle the bunny before. 

Ben stared up at her, at a loss as she looked the bunny over. “Is something wrong?” 

“No,” Allison said, not looking at him. “Just...just wait for me to be in here next time, okay?” 

“Okay, I promise I wasn’t doing anything else though, I know you don’t like people touching your stuff so—” 

“I know, but just—have someone else in here when you’re holding her. That’s the rule.” 

No one had told him that rule. He looked at the floor. “Okay,” he said, his voice small. “Sorry.” 

He had not defended himself that day. Now in the library, he understood Allison’s look as she searched his face for guilt. 

“Do you have something to tell me?” she said. 

“I don’t have her, I’ve been in here all night, ask Vanya. Besides, I know the rule.” 

“If you’re lying, I’ll find out.” 

“Why don’t you just get it over with and rumor me?” 

She winced. It was more rare for him to lose his temper. They generally considered him the patient, accommodating one. He worked hard at maintaining that impression, not wanting to be seen as quick-tempered or aggressive, striving to be docile and mild as he could be, not wanting anyone to think of him what they thought of the thing. He regretted what he’d said already, but couldn’t take it back. 

“Whoa, no need for that,” Klaus said. “Why don’t we all look for her before we start pointing fingers?” 

“No,” Ben said, surprising no one more than himself. “I want you to rumor me. Do it.” 

“Ben, what are you doing?” Vanya said. 

He stared at Allison, uncharacteristically defiant. She looked around at the others. 

“Don’t be so dramatic,” she scoffed. “I don’t have to rumor you, I believe you, okay?” 

“No you don’t. I want you to do it. I want you to know I didn't do anything wrong.” 

“Fine,” she snapped. “I heard a rumor you told me what happened to Eight.” 

“I don’t know. I haven’t been in your room all day.” 

She glared at him, her guilt and embarrassment turning to anger as usual. “If we’re done here, are you guys going to help me look or what?” 

In the end, it turned out that Father had found out about Eight, and installed her in a proper rabbit hutch in the room where they held class. He never addressed their going behind his back, and so everyone acted as though Eight had been the house pet all along.

That was how things happened then, in that house. They let their silences speak for them. All the small, petty things got said, but the big things lurked voiceless, stalking the perimeters, growing up between them like weeds.

They were like so many other families, in that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm quoting exactly [this episode of the Most Extreme](https://youtu.be/acZ-VOEQuDo). It's gloriously awful.  
> Yes, episode titles of Monsters Inside Me are [really like that](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsters_Inside_Me)  
> Maybe these were annoyingly obscure references but I was obsessed with these shows growing up and it's interesting to look back and remember where you first learned to be scared of something you hadn't otherwise known/cared about. It's interesting to wonder: was I born afraid of this, and if not, when and how did I learn to be? Or at least it is to me...feel free to share if you have any thoughts on that. :-)


	4. Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello dear reader!
> 
> A quick note: This story is fully sketched out and while some sections are still in the outline stage to leave me room to let them grow organically as things develop, it's mostly written. That means I know where I'm going with this so hang in there with me...it may seem disjointed but I have an endgame in mind.  
> I think I'm going to shoot for weekly updates. Maybe more frequently as I'd like to have it all up by the end of August, before my classes begin when I'll need to focus on my original projects.
> 
> This isn't my favorite chapter to be honest, because I didn't really want to write a bunch of mission sequences, and although the source material is superhero genre, that's not what I consider this, but I thought I should at least write one if only to see how the characters would act. At least it provides some variety, tone and pacing wise? Feel free to let me know what you think about that.
> 
> Thank you guys so so much for your wonderful comments--I really appreciate them. And as always, thank you for reading. :-)

They were thirteen when Father decided it was time to make their public debut. An apartment building was burning downtown, with several upper-story residents trapped inside.

“You’ve trained for this, but this is not training,” Father said. “This day will decide your initial reception by the public. It is crucial that the world see you in the most positive light today, do you understand? We only get to make one first impression. People are frightened by what is exceptional. The Phenomena undermined much of what many held to be true about the way the world is, and some will not recover from such a shock. I hope you all understand, then, why it’s important you’re perceived as benignly as possible.”

Ben and Klaus  exchanged a glance from behind their masks. Klaus stuck his tongue out and Ben grinned weakly, trying to keep his knees from shaking.

Sure, they’d been training hard and had gotten used to using their powers together as a team, but not like this. It wasn’t like any of them had power over water or were impervious to flame. What exactly  were they supposed to do that the fire department couldn’t? If the fire fighters couldn’t reach the upper floors, what were they going to do?

He was glad he wasn’t Number One.

Even standing outside on the street, the heat of the flames was intense, and for a moment his mind went blank as he watched smoke billow against the sky. It took him a moment to discern that it wasn’t only his own fear; the thing was terrified. The heat and the light made it shrink back and writhe beneath his skin, as though it could somehow burrow deeper and get further away.

To the horror of onlookers watching the blaze, the six children made their way into the building, past the police and firefighters whom Allison rumored into letting them through.

“How are we going to get up there?” she said, craning her neck to look up at the upper floors, where the flames were lapping ever nearer.

“I heard a rumor everyone got out safely and we went home?” Klaus said, and Allison gave him a light smack on the arm.

“It doesn’t work like that, dummy.”

“Well, maybe Diego can start throwing them parachutes or something. Seriously, we aren’t the Fantastic freaking Four, what good does Dad think we are against a burning building?”

Ben was inclined to agree, but didn’t dare voice his opinion as Luther shot Klaus a disapproving look. “We’ve been training. We can do this.”

“Well, you’d better come up with something,” Klaus muttered. “Or there are about to be a whole lot more very pissed off ghosts around here.”

Ben tried not to be unsettled by his brother’s increasingly morbid humor. It bothered him, but if that was how Klaus was dealing with things, well, it was better than having a tantrum like Diego occasionally did or even how Allison would now sometimes rumor them when she got annoyed. It was always something harmless and dumb, like the other day she’d made Diego sing ‘Ring Around the Rosy’ after he’d thrown a pen aimed right between the eyes of one of the movie star posters in her room. It might have been sort of funny, if it hadn’t also been so uncomfortable. Ben hoped he never annoyed her enough for her to do that to him, even if it was something small and silly like that.

“I can get up there easily enough,” Five said, “but I don’t know about bringing anybody back down with me. Not with a jump, at least.”

“I can probably just take the stairs,” Luther said.

“Take the stairs?” Allison said. “Really, Luther? You’ll just take the stairs, through the burning building that’s probably going to fall over on us any minute now?”

“If you make it up there and start throwing people out the windows, I can maybe slow their fall down enough to set them down gently,” Klaus said. “Maybe.”

“Great. Let’s just start throwing people out windows, that’ll go over real well in the papers,” Allison said.

“Well, how do you think it’s going to go over that we just stood here like a bunch of chumps?”

“He’s right—guys, we know what to do. Don’t let yourselves panic just because it’s real this time. Five will jump, Ben can get me and Diego up.”

“I can?” Ben squeaked.

“What about me?” Allison demanded.

“You can stay down here and help the people we save. Calm them down.”

“Oh yeah, because you don’t think maybe they'll need to be calmed down when they see what Ben's doing ? ”

“ H e y ."   


“ No offense, Ben.”

“Whatever.”

“I’m going,” Five said. “See you losers at the top.”

“Wait!” Luther said, but Five was already winking out of sight. He scowled and Allison smirked at him.

“Wanted to be the first to the top, didn’t ya?”

“Ben, let’s go,” Luther said.

Ben bit his lip."I don't know if it can reach that far. It never has before."  


The first floor was inaccessible. He would have to drop them into the second or third story.

"Well, you can try."

“It doesn’t like fire.”

“Oh yeah, because the rest of us just love it so much,” Allison said.

“I just mean it really doesn’t--are you sure?”

Luther nodded. “You can do this. You have to. Go, Ben.”

So Ben did what he was told, and let the thing's arms snake out, hesitant and wincing in the dry heat, the color of ash.

“Okay. Now just...careful. Very, very careful,” Luther said.

Ben bit his lip to keep from snapping something back as he concentrated on conveying his intention to the thing. One limb wrapped around Luther’s middle, and the other boy’s body tensed as he held his breath. Ben realized he could feel his brother’s heart beating, could sense it so clearly it was as though he held the pumping organ in his hands.

“Your heart’s going really fast,” he blurted, surprised by the fear he could almost taste coming off of Luther.

“Just the adrenaline,” Luther said.

“You can feel that?” Allison asked, a note of morbid curiosity in her voice. Then she gasped and went perfectly still when a second arm wrapped tentatively around her. “Holy crap.”

“It’s slimy,” Diego complained, holding his arms up so as not to touch the thing, wrinkling his nose. “My clothes are gonna be ruined, gross.”

“Stop whining,” Ben snapped.

They all looked at him with wide eyes, like three deer staring down a racing car, and he realized why his irritation might be frightening, with the thing wrapped  around them like that, winding tighter. He took a shaky breath. “Well. Up you go, I guess.”

The thing’s arms carried their weight with relative ease, wobbling only slightly as they stretched up the building. When he saw there was nowhere obvious to put them, he flinched and muttered a quick “Sorry,” before the thing’s fourth arm made an approximation of a club by curling at the end and punching through a window. Immediately a chorus of horrified screams began from inside the building and from the ground below as the onlookers watched. Ben bit the inside of his cheek hard against the bright hot pain of the glass and the immediate instinct to jerk back and away from the flames. The thing’s arms were steaming in the heat, the mucous coating them burning off.

“You’re doing great, Ben,” Klaus said, hovering beside him. “Slam dunk those suckers.”

Ben dropped his siblings through the window, the things arms hovering around the burning building, reaching forward to explore their environment before shying away from the heat.

“Poor little guy. Only gets to see the world when something’s gone horribly wrong,” Klaus said.

Ben stared at him, unamused. “Yeah, boo-hoo. Poor thing.”

“Seriously. Maybe we should start taking it for walks in the park or something.”

“You know that's not gonna happen.”

“Yeah. Just, you know. Little guy’s a part of the family too, right? Let him feel the love.”

Ben’s body jerked as one of the tentacles smashed through another window, to a renewed chorus of horrified screams. He yelped and struggled to tamp down his panic. Control. He had to be in control. But the thing was responding to the sensation of dozens of frantically beating hearts. It was...it was searching for them.

“Ohmygod,” Ben said, reaching out blindly to clutch his brother’s wrist, for something to hold onto and ground himself with. “Nonono, put that down, stop.”

He felt it reaching around inside the apartment building, tasting smoke and ash and the beating hearts of those inside, steaming in the heat and giving off a smell like a struck match, like burning ozone. It was hungry. It was...

It was making his mouth water and his eyes sting as if he were up there blinking through the smoke himself.

Ben covered his mouth with one hand. His breath came short and fast.

“Ben. Hey, Ben, hey, what’s happening? Talk to me,” Klaus said.

“I need to—this was a mistake, I can’t do it, I can’t.”

“Listen to me—yes, you can.”

The thing had found the beating heart and was wrapping itself around their warm body, suckers latching on. Ben whimpered. It could taste them.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to make his mind exit his body. He didn’t want to be here for this. He wanted to go away and come back when it was all over.

But the thing wasn’t squeezing, it was...it was lifting. It was lifting someone out of the broken window and lowering them down, while they screamed and struggled in its grasp.

It was listening to him. It was helping.

Ben laughed. “Oh, thank god, thank you.”

Klaus whooped. “Hell yeah, little guy to the rescue! We should keep a tally. Luther hasn’t even gotten one guy out yet. Man, he’s gonna be pissed.”

“This isn’t a game, you know, those people are in danger!”

“Not that one. He’s safe as can be,” Klaus said, grinning at the screaming person wrapped in the thing’s clutches.

Ben looked up, wincing. “They...don’t look too happy about it, do they?”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Klaus said, and Ben snorted as the thing set the person down on the ground, where they stood still, shaking, before sprinting screaming into the crowd that had gathered.

And then one of the officers surrounding the building fired a shot at the thing. Its blood arced through the air, black and sticky like tar. Ben gasped and clutched his stomach as he bent double. The pain was sharp and bright and stinging, but the panic was worse. The thing's arms whipped the air. The wound was only a graze, but he couldn't tamp down the thing's pain and confusion and anger.  


“Hey!” Klaus shouted. “Cut that shit out!”

The officer seemed to have triggered his colleagues into action, as they could hear the sound of gunfire from the other side of the building, and then the thing’s arm smashed against the ground, crunching down against the police cruiser, glass shattering and metal shrieking. T hen its arms whipped back beneath his skin fast and sudden like retracting a tape measure. He gasped as the breath was knocked out of him and nausea gripped his stomach. It had never raced back inside with such force before, like a barrelling train. He moaned.  


"Ben, are you okay?" Klaus said. "Oh my god, oh my god, please be okay, please say something."

"I'm okay," he said, his voice weak and shaky. "I think I'm gonna be sick though."

There was a cracking sound, and Five stepped out in front of them, taking in the sight in a matter of seconds. “Ben, if you can’t keep it under control, then you need to step back from the mission.”

“Get it under control? How about getting those trigger-happy morons under control! They're shooting at him!” Klaus said, gesturing wildly.

“They are not shooting at Ben, they’re shooting at the gigantic monster wrapped around a burning building, grabbing at people like a cat picking fish out of a bowl.”

“It’s helping them—it just saved that guy!”

“I know that,” Five said, holding up a placating hand. “I’m telling you what it looks like from their perspective—they don’t see you guys over here, they just see what looks like a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life."  


"Okay, you know I don't know what that is," Klaus said. "But you guys need to do something, because he can't get you all down if they're going to keep hurting it. Seriously. I can't believe Six just got shot at, and the first thing you say is 'get it under control.'"

Five had the rare grace to look guilty as he looked Ben up and down, taking in his pale face and hunched posture. "Are you all right? Do you need to stop and get help?"

"I'm okay. It got more scared than hurt, but--but I can't help if they're going to keep doing that."

Five nodded and was gone again. A moment later, Allison appeared hanging out the window with the enhanced megaphone Father had given her, for emergency crowd control. “Hey!” she shouted. "You guys! Yeah, you! I heard a rumor that you stopped shooting at my brother!”

Klaus cheered. “Hell yeah! Stick it to the man, Allie!”

“Does that even work?” Ben asked. “They don’t know I’m her brother though? And that’s the thing they’re shooting at, not me, so...?”

“Wait for it—” Klaus said. The gunfire had ceased, so he shrugged. “I’ll never understand how her thing works.”

“Me neither.”

“Aw, I guess that means the little guy’s really our brother! We’re octuplets!”

“Shut up,” Ben muttered, coaxing the thing back out. It maneuvered through more windows, finding more people trapped inside and wrapping around them, carrying them out of the burning building. At that point, the doors of the emergency exit at the back of the building burst open, and there stood Luther, his body stained with soot and holding an old woman in his arms. She took one look at Ben and Klaus--Klaus hovering cross-legged in the air, Ben's shirt pushed up over the writhing mass of alien limbs--and fell into a dead faint.

"Aw, what's her problem?" Klaus said.

“How did you get back down?” Ben asked, mystified.

“I took the stairs,” Luther said, his voice hoarse.

“ Of course he did,” Klaus muttered. “How are things up there? Nice and warm and cozy?”

Luther glared. “You know, if you’d practiced your telekinesis like Dad asked, maybe you’d be more help.”

“And make things easy on you? Come on, One, don’t tell me you don’t love a challenge.”

“I’m going back up,” Luther said, setting the woman down in the grass and turning back to the stairs.

“Wait, are you really going to run all the way back up there?” Ben asked.

"Yeah, beam him up, Scotty," Klaus said.

But Luther was already charging back into the building.

Almost everyone was out safely by now. The thing wound through the building, rounding up the last few stragglers. Suddenly, a dull burst of pain lit up on one of its arms—and then again, and again, as the thing dragged a woman out of a window. She shrieked and writhed in its grasp, plunging something into the thing and ripping it out, over and over. The thing tightened its grip around her, suckers latching on tight, and wrapping itself around her arms to hold them in place.

“What is with you people!” Klaus shouted. “Why are you stabbing?”

Ben couldn’t respond, using all his concentration to keep the thing from crushing the woman in its grasp. It dropped her on the ground, less gently than the others, but intact and uninjured.

"Oh, this doesn't feel good, it doesn't understand why everything hurts it," he mumbled.   


“Hang in there, Ben. You’re doing amazing,” Klaus said. “Hey, imagine what they’re going to say about us in the papers! Everybody’s going to love you! Eight-armed child wonder saves defenseless citizens from blazing inferno!” he said, putting on a voice like a carnival barker.

Ben didn’t have the energy to laugh, too busy gathering his siblings and pulling them from the building, gritting his teeth when he felt Diego trying to squirm away from him. When they were all back on the ground, the thing’s arms shrunk down, sprinkling him in hot, sticky blood as they lowered and returned to his body. He gasped and wobbled on his feet, exhausted. Klaus wrapped an arm around his shoulders to help support him.

“Oh my god, Ben!” Allison shouted, running over. “Is that blood?”

Ben tried to wipe the blood off his face, at least to clear his eyes, but only succeeded in smearing it more.

“Why did you bring us back down?” Diego demanded. “We have to go up again.”

“There’s no one left,” Ben said, trembling and looking down at his hands, at the thing’s shrinking arms, one oozing blood from where the bullet had grazed it and another from various shallow puncture wounds, all of them looking faded and sick from exposure to the flames.

“How do you know that?” Luther said.

“I just do.”

“I know you’re tired, Ben, but we can’t abandon anybody."

“We can tell—it can feel heartbeats. There’s nobody else up there.”

They were all quiet for a beat, and then Diego piped in, sounding more pleased than he had any right to be. “Like a shark. So cool.”

"Are you okay?" Allison said. "Do you need to sit down or something? You didn't really get hurt, did you?"

"No, no, we're fine, just, just tired and shook up." Ben saw what the woman had been stabbing them with—a pink fountain pen, still stuck in the flesh of one of the thing’s arms, all of which were now small and curled against his body. He reached one trembling hand down and whimpered, hesitating.  


Before he had time to react or flinch away,  Five grabbed the pen and pulled it straight out at the exact angle it had been driven in so as to not cause further damage. A spurt of black blood followed, a few drops splattering across his face and chest. He shuddered. They were all quiet. This, Ben thought in some calm, distant part of his mind, was not how he’d imagined it would look when they were heroes.

"Thanks," he muttered, the thing tucking itself away beneath his skin once more. It felt safe there, and the haze of pain and confusion and anger faded.

Then Father was there, and they were being corralled into a line in front of a crowd of onlookers and the press, and Ben stared at his shoes listening to the roaring in his ears, feeling the thing ache under his skin, its blood drying on his skin and clothes, wincing at the noise and the camera flashes.  


Father was able to whisk them away from the public eye quickly, and then they were in the car, and from the front seat Luther was passing back a package of wipes, and Allison helped him clean the blood off his face and shirt as best as they could, while he waited for his hands to stop shaking and his heart so slow down and the blank buzzing in his head to recede. They were all talking fast and loud, relaying what had just happened over and over again, and he was grateful to be able to sit quietly amid the familiar sound of his siblings all trying to talk at once.

Allison wiped a final spot of blood off the side of his face and smiled. "You did really good today."

"It wasn't really me," he said. He hadn't meant to say that out loud, but she didn't hear him anyway, reaching over to flick Diego on the ear for something he'd said.

Ben let himself zone out for the rest of the ride, and found himself coming back to awareness outside an  icecream parlor. He blinked. It was no hunger-induced hallucination—they were really there.

“Are we getting ice cream?” he blurted.

“He speaks!” Klaus said. “You got quiet on us there for a minute.”

“You sure you're feeling okay, Ben?” Allison asked.

He nodded.

“Are you sure? You said you didn’t feel good earlier...”   


“If you’re not well, we can return home,” Father said.

“No, wait—I'm fine now,” Ben said. “Really, we don’t have to go home!”

Father sighed. “I thought so. Some of you are easier to please than others,” he muttered, and Ben flushed. Look, it wasn’t as though he wasn’t still very exhausted, and very aware that the thing was curled up and aching under his skin, but, well—ice-cream.

“You look a mess,” Father said, looking them up and down, their soot-stained skin and clothes. “But I suppose there’s nothing to be done about that. Come along, children, whatever you want.”

“Can we bring something home for Vanya?” Five asked.

“Did number Seven assist in today’s mission?”

Five let the subject drop, the faintest frown the only sign of his displeasure.

They ate their  ice cream in the shade beneath a tree behind their house, Luther recapping their mission over and over again while enjoying his vanilla cone, while Klaus tried to derail him by critiquing his ice cream choices.

“Look, I’m just saying, forget astrology, I can tell you everything I need to know about you based on ice-cream flavor preferences,” Klaus said, making his eyes wide and his voice a raspy whisper. “I know you better than you know yourself.”

It was funny, in a typical weird, Klaus-like way, but Ben couldn’t help wondering where he got stuff like that from. He wondered how much of his brother’s joking came from the ghosts clamoring for his attention.

“We really need to focus and debrief,” Luther said. “Come on, pay attention.”

“What is there to say? Ben pretty much singlehandedly—excuse me, four-handedly—or would it be no-handedly?—saved the day.”

Ben looked down, watching a drop melt off his double-chocolate cone. “That’s not true.”

“You did kind of carry the team today,” Allison admitted.

“Literally,” Klaus added.

“We wouldn’t even have gotten near the building without you,” Ben said. “And you guys helped people get closer to the windows. I wouldn’t have been able to reach all of them otherwise.”

“This is why we need to debrief,” Luther said. “It shouldn’t be so uneven. We need to be more organized next time. Any input?”

“Yeah, here’s some input,” Klaus said. “How about we rumor everybody not to freak out and attack us  _ before  _ they start shooting?”

“It’s not like we knew that was going to happen,” Luther said. “You have to understand why people were...shocked.”

Terrified out of their minds was more like it, Ben thought.

“I do understand,” Ben said, his voice quiet, unable to meet his siblings’ eyes. “But...but next time, maybe I don’t have to be so, you know...out there? Exposed?”

“Isn’t that kind of impossible?” Diego said. “Like, there’s really no way for you not to be pretty visible.”

“I know that, I guess I just mean...a little cover would be nice? If you could. The thing is really tough, and it could have been a lot worse, I mean, we didn't actually get hurt too bad, but—but it still hurts, you know.”

“Of course it hurts! You got stabbed!” Klaus said.

“No he didn’t, stop saying that!” Diego said, looking genuinely distressed. “We’d never let Ben just get hurt like that.”

“Exactly,” Luther said. “That was the monster getting hurt, not Ben.”

“So it’s fine to just let the little guy get beat to a pulp then while it’s trying to help us, that’s what you’re saying?” Klaus said.

Luther looked at him like he was speaking another language. “I don’t understand.”

“Why is it fine for people to hurt it?"  


“Are you serious?” Luther said, staring at Klaus in disbelief. “It’s not a person or a pet or something, Klaus, it's a monster that wouldn’t help us at all if Ben wasn’t controlling it—it'd probably just tear us all apart. It’s horrible for him, don’t you know that? It’s horrible, just imagine having to live with it. I don’t get how you can say stuff like that.”

Ben stared at the grass, ice-cream melting down his hand. He'd wiped most of the thing's blood off in the car, but spots of it were still drying on his clothes. Nobody had acted like it was something to take care of right away, and he hadn’t wanted to be left out. Like Vanya.

“It hurts Ben when the thing gets hurt. Isn’t that all the reason you should need to care about whether it gets hurt or not?” Klaus said.

“It doesn’t—it’s not the same,” Luther said, his voice rising in frustration. “Of course I’d never let anybody hurt Ben like that. How can you even act like it’s the same thing? Ben, don’t listen to him. I know that thing’s not...not you. You don’t feel what it feels.”

“Do you even listen, or do you just like, ignore anything that doesn't fit with your own idea of how things are?" Klaus said. "He _told you_ that it hurts both of them. Tell him, Ben."

What could he say? It must be wrong, it must be very, very wrong, that he and the thing were as close as he felt they were. That he felt its pain, sensed its limbs like extensions of his own body. No wonder his siblings, aside from Klaus, didn’t want to accept that he felt what it did. It was horrible. It was disgusting, and scary, and alien. Even if he told Luther the truth, he was sure the other boy wouldn’t believe him—and that would only hurt Ben more, seeing his brother deny what he was, because it was too horrible to accept, because it ruined Luther’s image of his brother—an innocent victim of the monster living under his skin. It would make Ben alien, too.  


"No, Luther's right,” he mumbled. "I'm fine."  


Klaus sighed, but Klaus’  disappointment didn’t sting the way Luther’s would. Klaus would still be his friend, when all was said and done. Ben wasn’t sure what Luther would be, if he was forced to accept that his neat division of his brother and the thing wasn't the whole story.  


“Can we please get on with the debrief now?”

“Five likes coffee  icecream because he’s an old man at heart and I can tell Allison wants to be thought of as the fun one since she got strawberry.”

“What about me?” said Diego.

“Cookie dough just means you’re basic like Luther, but want to seem edgy.”

Allison snorted and Diego glared at Klaus and his abomination of a bubblegum  ice cream cone covered in about an inch of sprinkles. “Well what the hell does yours mean then?”

“That I have great taste, duh. Oh, and Ben’s is pretty much the  ice cream equivalent of being a Cancer, astrologically speaking.”

“Astrology?” Luther said, frowning.

“I read about it in one of Allison’s magazines. We’re Libras, in case you were wondering.”

Ben tuned his siblings out. He was ready to shower and sleep for the rest of the day. Casting his gaze up at the house, he thought he saw a pale figure staring down at them from a high window. That was Vanya’s room.

The curtains swung shut before he could wave.

“Your Friendly Neighborhood Cthulhu: child heroes and pet monster save dozens from downtown fire.”

The headline shouted at them from the paper in Father’s hands, a photograph of the building with the thing’s tentacles wrapped around it, Allison leaning out of one window with the megaphone to her mouth. Klaus kept glancing at it and snickering. Ben didn't want to look at it at all.

Father turned the page. “Teen Wonders Perform Daring Rescue. Meet Dr. Hargreeve’s Umbrella Academy.” There they were all in a row in their costumes, covered in soot and blood.

Father folded the paper and looked at them. “Could have gone better, but it will have to do. Next time, make sure you’re the face of things,” he said, staring hard at Luther, who looked down. “We don’t need this on the front cover,” Father said, tapping the front of his paper, where the photo of the thing loomed large in black and white.   


“Yes, sir,” said Luther.

“They’ve already begun giving you all appellations,” Father said. He turned the page again. There it was— _The Horror,_ in big, black letters, dripping like the title on a trashy B-movie poster, splashed across a picture of the thing. He looked up and briefly caught Ben’s eye before turning back to his paper. “For once I’d say the public has spoken with some accuracy.”

And so they had a name now, him and it.  


He wasn't born feeling monstrous. Then he began to grow up, and at every turn, he was confronted with the fact that he was, beyond a doubt. The Horror, that was what they called him.

If that was what everyone saw, it must really be true. Maybe he would have to spend his whole life making up for that, trying to prove them wrong.

Maybe he'd grow into the name.

A couple days after the burning building and the ice cream, Ben and Five were once again reading on the floor in Vanya’s room while she practiced her violin. They had both finished their books, but had been too lazy to go and find something else to read, and so had just swapped. Now Five was reading  _ A Series of Unfortunate Events, _ and Ben was trying to wrap his head around  _ Hyperspace.  _ Ben kept sneaking glances at his brother, to see how Five was making out. Five had a crease between his brows, like he was troubled or concentrating hard, and Ben had to try not to giggle every time he looked over.

Five’s book was incredibly interesting to think about, but difficult to read. Ben found his mind wandering, imagining all of the possibilities, more focused on the fantasy his mind was making than on the words. The thing was squirming, restless and impatient with sitting still. It had already fully healed from its minor injuries. At least, physically it had. There remained something wounded and needy about it that he was constantly, albeit dimly aware of, no matter how he tried to ignore it. He rolled onto his back, his skin crawling, poking at his stomach as a stray tentacle tried to peek out.

“Stop that,” he muttered.  


Five glanced over, and Ben couldn’t help but think his brother looked relieved for the excuse to stop reading. “Something bothering you?”

“No, just...” Ben winced as he felt the thing twisting in his belly, rippling beneath his skin. He didn't want to feel the feelings it was shoving at him, determined to be noticed. He  snuck a glance at Five, but his brother appeared unperturbed by the sight of the thing moving under Ben’s skin. “It wants out.” He sighed. “It seems like it always wants out,” he muttered.

“Well,” Five said, holding his book open with one finger, “is there a reason it can’t come out? Would that...help you? Make you more comfortable?”

Ben stared at his brother, dumbstruck, while the thing wound the end of one tiny tentacle around the finger he was still poking against his own belly, winding up around his wrist. “Huh?”

Five cleared his throat. “It just seems that, if it’s not going to be aggressive, then there’s no reason for you to make yourself uncomfortable. Certainly not on our behalf.”

“Oh.” Ben looked down at his hand, where the thing was lightly latching onto his skin, all cool and damp, the pale blue-green color he associated with its calm state. “Well...I don’t know. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, either.”

“Like I said. If it’s not being aggressive, or unduly disruptive, then I can’t see a reason why I should have any issue with its presence.”

“I didn’t...know you felt that way,” Ben said.

Five shrugged. “Maybe I’ve misunderstood. Maybe you do in fact prefer to keep it contained. I just thought I’d...you know. I'm just curious, if it really is so...so necessarily dangerous, all of the time, like Dad seems to think.”

It wasn’t like Five to cut himself off like that. Ben felt a surge of appreciation for his brother, who was determined to communicate, even if it put him outside his emotional comfort zone. “When I’m...when I’m alone and relaxed, sometimes I let it out. I think it likes that. It makes it...calmer.”

_ It makes us both calmer, _ he thought, but didn’t say. Were he and Five close enough to admit to things like that? Sure, he and his brother got along well enough and liked reading together, but that was worlds away from having personal conversations.

Five nodded. “I’d wondered if it might be like that,” he murmured.

Ben poked at the tentacle with his other hand, the one it wasn’t wound around. “Well...it’s Vanya’s room,” he mumbled, glancing over to find her already looking at him with trepidation and curiosity.

“Is it...dangerous?” she asked.

Ben hesitated. He knew what Dad and the others thought. Of course it was dangerous.

But that wasn't what he felt to be wholly true, deep down. He shook his head. “It’s calm. It feels safe right now. But if you don’t want—”

She shook her head, looking determined. “Then let it. I don’t ever get to really see you guys’ powers. Not up close all the time, like the rest of you do. I want...to get used to it.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded.   


Slowly, he let the thing’s arms creep out past his shirt, small and slow and tentative, the color of pale sea foam. Five and Vanya both sat still, watching as the arms hovered, getting a sense of the room. “It’s looking around,” Ben murmured.

“But...does it have eyes?” Vanya asked.

“Well, I—it uses these ones,” Ben said, flushing and tapping his own temple. “But it’s also got something else. I don’t know how to explain how it sees, really...I don’t know what to compare it to. But I guess it sort of...tastes the air, in a way? And I think it’s got something to do with electricity, too.”

“That’s...kind of cool,” Vanya said. “Hey there,” she said, sitting still as the thing reached an arm closer to her.

“Don’t touch her,” Ben said, giving the arm a soft tug. It withdrew closer to him, curling against his side and laying its weight across his stomach. “Oof. You’re heavy.”

Another arm stretched closer to Five, who hesitantly reached out a hand. The arm curled, gently pressing its back against Five’s hand before uncurling to explore with its sensitive underside. Ben could feel the lines in Five’s palm, his fingerprints, the faintest lingering imprint of a papercut he’d gotten a week ago.

“It’s soft,” Five said. “Curious little thing, aren’t you?”

The third arm was seeking water. Sensing the moisture in the room, it somehow found its way to the glass on Vanya’s nightstand. Before Ben could stop it, it had reached inside and began drinking through its skin.

“Hey,” he said, wincing. “Er...sorry, Vanya.”

“That’s okay,” she said, watching with something like awe on her face as the water seemed to vanish from the glass like magic. “I...guess it was thirsty.”

“It likes water,” he said, sheepish. “I think there’s a lot of water where it comes from.”

“What makes you say that?” Five said, surprised.

“I...I don’t know. Just a feeling.”

“Is that really surprising? I mean, look at it,” Vanya said. “It looks like it belongs in water.”

“It also likes your playing,” he said, and she looked over at him sharply.

“What?”

“Your playing, it—it likes to listen.”

“How do you know that?”

“I can tell. We both like it.”

“You’re not just saying that?”

He shook his head. “It’s cool because it’s like I’m hearing it two ways—the sound and the...I guess the vibration?”

“Sound is vibration,” she said. “But I guess I get what you mean. Sort of. Like how you can ‘hear’ music by touching a speaker.”

“Kind of?”

She readied her violin. “Well, since I have such an appreciative audience, I’d better keep practicing.”

Ben closed his eyes as she played, content to lie on his back and listen, their whole body feeling loose and warm and relaxed, the thing coiling around him, one arm hugged against his chest, almost like i wanted...to be snuggled. It was next to impossible to move with it lying on him like that, and too comfortable to bother. Feeling his mind drifting, he called it back inside, unwilling to leave them so exposed in case he fell asleep, which he did shortly after.

When he woke, the room was dimly lit now by just the bedside lamp. Someone had thrown a blanket over him. He heard whispered voices above him on the bed.

“What...” he mumbled.  


“Ben?” Vanya whispered, and then she and Five were peering over the edge of the bed at him. “Sorry. We didn’t  want to wake you. You looked really comfortable,” she whispered.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, shifting. “I’ll go.”

“No, it’s okay,” she said. “You can stay there. Goodnight.”

“ G’night ,” he mumbled, and let himself slide back into sleep.

That was a good night, the memory of which he lost for a while when it became too painful. When he found it again, he held it close. It was a rare moment of belonging and acceptance that had come so easily, and so naturally, that later he could hardly believe it had happened at all.  


There was a new Polaroid photo on Vanya’s wall the next morning. It was a picture of her throwing up a peace sign while Five peered at the camera over the top of a book, one brow raised in wry judgment but with his mouth quirked up, Ben grinning shyly beside him.  


They were just like normal people, in their own way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ten more days until season 2, right? Are you guys excited? I'm curious about what direction they'll take things. I might not have too much time to watch though, at least not right away. Next week I'll be driving a whole lot since I'm moving to attend grad school. Pretty exciting!
> 
> Well, I hope you're all doing all right. Hang in there everyone.


	5. Lullaby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forbidden nanny lore, excessive reference to a certain 80's film, meditations on the nature of the octopus, Five goes full knock-off Dostoevsky monologue mode, and ghosts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Sorry I missed a week...right after I said I was going for weekly updates. In my defense--I was driving through four states. Still not quite settled, but getting there. 
> 
> I had a lot of fun with this one, although what I have fun writing and what is fun to read may not correlate? We shall see.
> 
> Also, I only have to mention this due to certain...details that the show alters from the comics, so...assume none of the kids have taken a life as far as this story is concerned. It's not something I imagine casually happening left and right in this verse the way it seems to in the Netflix adaptation. That wasn't a thing in the comics, and it certainly wasn't part of the original depiction of the Horror, so it was never a factor in my ideas of who these characters are as I originally thought of them, and it's not a change I like, so I'm leaving it out.
> 
> Right! On to the story. Thank you guys so much for your comments, and thank you for reading.

The infants had all been fed and were asleep now in their seven cribs. The nanny sank down in her chair with a relieved sigh. She had dragged the chair out of the room where they slept and into the hall, right next to the open door, so she could hear them and look in at them from time to time, without having to see them right before her. She rubbed her temples. It seemed that by afternoon, she always had a headache these days. A hot, simmering headache that made her see shadows in her periphery and tiny pinpricks of brilliant gold light shooting across her vision which disappeared when she tried to look at them straight on. If it kept on like this, she would have to tell her doctor. So far, however, she was content to chalk them up to the demands of the job. It paid well. It had better, for the work she did. The headaches always faded when she left the Hargreeves house, and were a distant murmur in the back of her mind by the end of her day off, easily forgotten. 

Impossible to forget, when she was looking at the infants. 

Some people called them miracle babies and fancied them a signal of their coming salvation; others thought they were the heralds of the end times. She didn’t wonder about such things; she was a professional. They were infants and they needed to be taken care of, and that was all. She prided herself for her focus. The nanny before her had been caught checking their scalps for the mark of the beast. That one hadn’t lasted long. She was determined to be different. She didn’t care for prophecy. If they’d each had a birthmark shaped like 666, it wouldn’t have mattered to her, because the fact remained—they were infants, and it was her job to care for them. 

Still. She was glad her day off was tomorrow. The house was enormous and cold and when the babies were asleep, so very quiet. So quiet she thought she heard things sometimes. A faint whisper. She paid this no mind. It was only her senses straining for input in a big, empty house. She was not one of those superstitious people who jumped at shadows, who listened to the quiet for voices—

One of the children was awake. 

She stood, setting her newspaper down on the chair, folded and unread, and went back into the room, walking down the row of cribs, arranged in the order her employer had implemented, for reasons she knew not. They’d all been born on the same day, a fact she was very much aware of, the world still reeling in the wake of the Phenomena, but maybe there had been a deviation of moments or hours between births. Maybe it was their birth order, or the order in which they had been adopted. Maybe there was no reason at all. Perhaps the man had just counted them off one day, and that was that. He was an eccentric man, that was well-known, but he had his own internal pragmatism. Maybe it looked like fancy to those who didn’t know better, but she would always say that her employer was a practical man. 

Her nerves grew as she went down the row of cribs. She ignored them. She was good at separating her feelings from the job to be done. One, Two, Three, all sound asleep. Her skin prickled. Four had been restless when she laid him down, but now he was restful in a deep sleep. Her mouth was very dry, wasn’t it? Five sound asleep, and so was Seven. 

That just left Six. 

The infant stared at her with dark, wet eyes. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She lifted Number Six out of his crib, her movements all strong and sure, pushing away the fuzzy, muddled ache in her head that felt like a halo of static interference. She bounced him gently in her arms as she walked slowly across the room to the rocking chair. He was one of the fussy ones, but also one of the easiest to calm. She would have him back to sleep in no time. She sat in the chair and began to rock slowly and gently back and forth, the baby nestled in her arms making snuffly, wordless sounds, squirming in his blanket. She began to hum. First a tuneless melody, and then her lips began to half-form the syllables. 

“Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird...” 

The baby seemed more content already, snuggled against her chest and listening to the vibration of her voice there, the steady rise and fall of her breathing. His eyes stayed open and staring. 

“If that mockingbird don’t sing, Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.” 

The rocking motion was soothing her as well. She silently scolded herself for her nerves. The infant was warm in her arms. She needed more sleep, was all—to stop staying up so late listening to the radio, waiting for phone calls that wouldn’t come. 

“If that diamond ring turns to brass, Mama’s gonna buy you a looking glass...” 

Faint pressure behind her eyes. The edges of her vision were swimming with impossible, indistinct forms. Just a trick of the light. The baby’s eyes met hers, and she could not look away. And she could not look away. And she could not— 

“If that looking glass gets broke, Mama’s gonna buy you a billy-goat.” 

He looked like the other children, but he was not. He was shaped like a child—he sounded like a child—he felt, swaddled in her arms, like any other child—but he was _not._ A slow, yawning emptiness opened up at the bottom of her stomach and horror washed through her from the top of her skull to the soles of her feet. 

“If that billy-goat won’t pull, Mama’s gonna buy you a cart and bull...” 

She kept up her humming and her slow, gentle rocking, and stared into the child’s face as tears streamed silently down her cheeks. And she saw—and there was a—what she had thought of as the world was only the smallest, slightest, most insignificant little slip, and looking in the child’s eyes, she saw that the water ran deep, ran very, very deep, and it went all the way down, bottomless. The rest of the iceberg that was the world glided below the surface in silence, with the sound of a hundred thousand skittering insect legs 

the sound of wind whistling through a hole in the trunk of a rotten tree 

the sound of a spider spinning a web 

the sound of the earth turning (she could feel the earth turning) 

the sound of water drip, drip, dripping for a million years through a crack in the ground and forming a gigantic hungry cavern below their feet 

the sound of someone chewing on porcelain 

the sound of indistinct voices mumbling terrible secrets in languages that did not exist and had never existed 

the sound of mold growing on a fallen tree 

the sound of cells multiplying, the sound of flowers rotting, the sound of a finger circling the rim of a crystal glass and producing that high, fine ringing, and all of it in silence. 

There was a shroud over the dead face of the world, and in terror and in ecstasy she saw it begin to slip the barest fraction of an inch, half the width of a single hair, and there was—it was— 

He looked like a child, was shaped like a child, he made the same cooing murmur in a thousand voices like a child, had the same tangle of writhing limbs as a child, had the exact countless number of mismatched eyes rolling in their sockets as a child, was an impossible shape both completely irregular and absolutely symmetrical on all sides in every possible dimension like any other child, but he was _not_ a— 

Or at least, it probably went something like that. Of course, Ben didn’t exactly remember. He’d been barely a year old after all. The Horror’s memory was powerful and enduring, but that far back consisted solely of sensation—warmth, cold, hunger, others he didn’t have a word for. 

But he thought about her all the time. 

"You nearly drove your nanny mad once, you know.” 

He was fourteen years old and seated on the examination table, the Horror small and cowering under his skin, cold and exhausted. It hated the MRI machine, but Father had insisted. His body felt weak and wasted with the effort of keeping it inside during the scans. He’d been half asleep with the blood pressure cuff around his arm, dreaming of curling up in his warm bed. 

He was wide awake now. 

“What?” 

Father’s attention was on his notes, his voice offhanded, distracted. “Mhm. So I suppose I shouldn’t be too disappointed with your progress, even if I had hoped for a bit more...refinement, by now. There was a time when I wasn’t sure what would become of you. Although it hasn’t proven very useful, at least your condition hasn’t led to the chaos it might have. Although if you could only learn to focus and exert more control, who knows.” 

“Wait, what about the nanny? What happened to her?” 

“Oh. Following her nervous breakdown? She made a quick recovery. She was a very resilient woman. I was almost disappointed to see her go.” 

“Is that...when we got Mom?” 

Without bothering to look up at him, still absorbed with his notes, Hargreeves said, “It was one among a number of other, more significant factors, yes.” 

He might have wondered what those other factors were, had he not been so concerned about the nanny. 

His father’s account was disturbing not so much because of what he’d said as what he hadn’t. What did that mean, “nearly drove her mad?” Who even talked like that anymore outside of period dramas? It sounded antiquated, it rang with a note of the supernatural in a way that it wouldn’t if he’d simply said, “you frightened her,” or anything more direct. He could understand if he had frightened the nanny, or repulsed her, but “drove her nearly mad?” The phrase haunted him. He heard it echoing sometimes when he hadn’t thought of it in a while, always lurking in the back of his mind. 

He didn’t spend a lot of time looking in mirrors. As a rule, he spent as little time as possible. So it was a rare occasion when he caught a glimpse of himself while changing his shirt before bed that day, and paused. From the corner of his eye he’d caught the movement of the Horror briefly distending the skin on his side beneath his ribs, before sinking back down. He stood and stared, waiting. It had been a long time since he’d really looked at this much of his skin all at once. 

It was...well. There was a reason he showed as little of it as possible out in public. 

“What are you, really?” he asked. 

The Horror didn’t answer, just stirred and shifted beneath his skin. Maybe that was its answer. 

“What am I to you? Just like, a cage? A door? Just a warm place to live? What?” 

It had a voice—had infinite voices. But no language. Not one he could understand, anyway. 

“What are we?” 

Nothing. 

He yanked his shirt on, feeling jilted and ridiculous. What was he even talking to? Did it understand him, understand anything at all? Was it even conscious in a way he could recognize, was it at all sentient in any way that mattered? Nobody else really seemed to think it was. Klaus attributed motives and emotions to it sometimes, but those were only jokes. At best, to everyone else it was capable of anger and hunger, nothing more, less than a wild animal. Sometimes even less than that, just an unthinking force of nature, alive but inanimate. More natural disaster than a creature. If it had thoughts or intentions at all, they were beyond human reason and not worth considering. 

It seemed like, once upon a time, their minds had been different; he had thought its thoughts, and it his. But that was simply too grotesque to ponder now. If he opened that box, he was not sure what would come out. He would not be able to close it again. If it was even closed at all, even now. 

The seven of them sat huddled in the dark, bathed in blue light from the television screen, all gathered close together on the floor beneath blankets while the rain poured outside and inside the heavy bass from the TV speakers reverberated in their chests. It was Halloween night and they had eaten themselves sick with candy bought from the corner store, a suitable replacement to the trick or treating they had decided to forego that year. They were twelve years old and it had been Diego, Allison, and Vanya’s idea to stay up late watching horror movies, the three of them giddy in their desire to be scared. 

They were already jumpy after watching _The Grudge_ and had taken a brief break to turn the lights on and shift around their nest of blankets and pillows. Now it was dark again and the sounds of a chopper and heavy synth filled the room as a dog raced across blue ice on the screen, its tongue lolling. They'd all voted to watch _The Thing_ next from Allison and Diego’s selection of movies. Ben hadn’t voted at all. The thing—the— _it_ was curling queasily around his organs, sick with sugar but wanting more. 

Of course, it wasn’t a dog at all. Its body erupted like a carnivorous plant, oozing slime, tendrils shooting forth, with a hissing, rattling sound. 

_“You see, what we’re talking about here is an organism that imitates other life forms, and imitates them perfectly. When this Thing attacked our dogs, it tried to digest them. Absorb them. And in the process, shape its own cells to imitate them. This, for instance, that’s not a dog. That’s imitation. We got to it before it had time to finish.”_

At the time, he was only disgusted and shocked, as they all were. But later he’d think of the movie, and wonder. What did it mean, to imitate another organism perfectly? Would you even know if you’d been infected? What was the difference between an original and a perfect copy? A truly perfect copy? If this thing entered your body, and made a perfect imitation, cell by cell—what were you? What was the really scary idea in the movie—the inhuman bodily mutation and violence, or the unseen but lingering promise that if it was allowed to complete its work, no one would know they’d been replaced at all? 

_“We're_ _gonna_ _draw a little bit of everyone's blood,_ _'cause_ _we're_ _gonna_ _find out who's the Thing. Watching Norris in there gave me the idea that every little part of him was a whole. Every little piece was an individual animal with a built-in desire to protect its own life. You see, when a man bleeds, it's just tissue. But blood from one of you Things won't obey when it's attacked. It'll try and survive. Crawl away from a hot needle, say.”_

He held his breath with the rest of them while the blood test was carried out, jumped and startled with his siblings when the Thing was discovered, betrayed by its own biology. He kept to himself that he was thinking too much into it, probably more than was justified. It was just a horror movie. He was supposed to be grossed out and delighted by the thrill of being scared. He was probably not supposed to be wondering—but was the Thing conscious? Could it help but infect people? Was infecting them malicious, or was it simply what it did, like breathing, like a heartbeat? If they’d simply stopped hunting it down from body to body, would it have felt safely hidden away inside a perfect copy, and everyone would be none the wiser?

He shuddered and winced and made himself small and quiet as the plot escalated. Bodies erupted, broke their boundaries, took on inhuman and terrifying forms. If he was small and quiet no one would know—and the danger would pass—and he would be safe— 

He let these things get to him too much. Really, he did. It was just a movie. He wasn’t a Thing. He wasn’t a copy. His body wasn’t going to—he'd never—it was nothing like that. Nobody was going to accuse him of being anything other than Number Six, Ben, their brother—but if they did, would his blood jump like that, desperate to live? Would they give themselves away like that? 

He told himself, you shouldn’t worry so much. You shouldn’t even think so much. But he was a hopeless case. Anything he saw was material for analyzation. If only he could be like Five, and turn that attention to useful things, find a project for himself, invent something. But no, he never became fixated on anything useful. Only stories. Only lies, fictions, deceits. Always trying to stitch scraps of what other people had said together, in a way that made sense, in a way that would make a mirror in which to finally see himself reflected. 

They were looking for themselves everywhere—under every rock, in every cave and ditch and pile of abandoned rubbish. 

Not all animals responded unusually to him. Not even most of them. Still, the occasions where they seemed to sense something off about him were burned quite acutely into his memory. 

She was a service dog, a sleek Doberman Pinscher with a glossy black coat and pointed ears. They watched her from a distance while Mom deliberated over the selection of fresh vegetables. He, Klaus and Diego had accompanied her to the grocery store, where she needed to pick up a few last-minute things for that night’s dinner. Father often had groceries delivered to the house, so it was something of an outing when they went on occasion. They were seven years old and a trip to the grocery was still considered an exciting excursion. 

“Do you think I could pet her?” Diego asked, peering down the aisle at the dog. 

“I don’t think so. She’s got a vest on, look, she's working,” said Klaus. 

Ben was happy to look at a distance. Big dogs made him nervous. 

Mist sprayed down over the display, coating the heads of broccoli in glittering droplets. They looked very beautiful under that fine curtain of water, Ben thought—almost otherworldly, when you really got to looking closely at the great variation in shape, color, and texture. But of course, they were of the earth. They had grown in the earth, evolved from the first living cell of the earth. Even the strangest, rarest thing was not so distantly removed from him. Even the blind fish swimming under a million pounds of pressure in the darkest part of the ocean, feeding off chemical vents and never knowing sunlight or air, were still part of this interconnected family of living things. Distant cousins. Nothing was so far removed that he couldn’t find some commonality with it, if he only looked closely enough, with patience and careful attention. The clusters of broccoli florets reminded him of the picture of nerve cells in their science textbook. Like little brains. Anything alien at first glance could become familiar. 

They followed Mom down the aisle, toward the milk, where she paused again, reading the labels. He wasn’t looking at the dog, not at first, but it was looking at him. 

“Look at the dog,” Diego whispered. “It’s staring right at us. I think it’s mad.” 

When he glanced over, its ears were flattened close to its skull, the lips pulled back from the long white teeth and the livid gums. A low, almost inaudible growl reverberated deep in its chest. It widened its stance when Ben turned to stare at it, backing up against the woman holdings its leash and placing its body firmly between them. Somewhere deep down, lower than language, he registered the threat and fear squeezed his heart. The thing curled beneath his skin, dispersing itself like subcutaneous armor, but what good was that, when its body was so soft and so fragile and so breakable, and the dogs teeth and claws were so hard and sharp? 

“Penny,” the woman said under her breath. “C’mere.” 

The dog responded to her immediately. It whined once, still staring at them, but then its haunches lowered and though it remained alert, it relaxed and padded along after her as she went further down the aisle. 

Only then did Ben catch sight of the skin on the back of his hand. He stifled a gasp and immediately looking around. No one was staring. Well, except for Diego and Klaus, but he was used to that. 

“Did you know your freckles could do that?” Klaus asked. 

“It’s not freckles,” Ben said. “It’s normal.” 

“Dude, I don’t know what it is, but it’s not normal,” Diego said. 

Ben flushed. Not that a flush was at all visible, with the thing spread out right beneath their skin, right up against the surface—closer than that—almost as if it had become their skin. 

“It’ll go away in a second,” he said, and indeed, the sudden spots of pigmentation were already fading, the thing receding. 

“What was that?” Diego asked. 

“It looked cool,” Klaus said. “Can you make it do that, or does it just happen?” 

Ben shifted, uncomfortable with the attention. “I don’t think I can control it. It got scared just then, ‘cause of the dog. That’s why it happened, I think.” 

Diego rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. Like a little dog scares that thing.” 

He smiled agreeably, but was privately confused by his brother’s remark. Maybe the thing looked frightening, but of course it was scared. It was still only little, like him. The dog had been completely alien to it. 

Everything but him was alien to it, around here. 

Fight or flight got the most press as far as stress responses went, but when it came to danger, Ben learned he couldn’t count on his body doing either. He froze. If he stayed very still, maybe he would not get so hurt. If he was good, and obedient, and made himself small and quiet and as inoffensive as he possibly could, then maybe the danger would pass them over, its shadow falling across them from overhead and then gliding on by. 

“If you could trade your power for another one, and it could be anything you wanted, what would you choose?” 

Klaus didn’t turn his head when he spoke, just went on staring straight up at the leaves of the tree they were lying beneath. Sunlight filtered through them casting dappled patterns of light and darkness across their bodies, the grass. 

“Flying,” Diego said, his voice calling down to them from above, where he was climbing the branches. 

“Yeah, flying would be pretty cool,” said Allison, swinging her legs as she sat on a low hanging branch. 

“That ones too obvious,” Klaus complained. “Think of something more interesting, like—talking to animals, or something.” 

“Is that what you’d want?” Ben asked. 

“...I mean, it was just an example. It’s not better than flying.” 

“Definitely not,” said Diego. 

“Invisibility,” said Ben. 

“Really?” Klaus asked. 

“That’s a sneaky power. What do you even want to be invisible for?” Allison said. “You don’t ever do anything you’d need it for.” 

“Like stealing. Or vandalism. Or trespassing,” said Klaus. 

“Why do you guys immediately think of the bad stuff? I wouldn’t use it to do anything wrong,” Ben said, flushing. “I would just do normal stuff.” 

“You’d do the same stuff you do now, just invisibly?” Diego said. “That’s dumb.” 

“No, think about it—you could walk around, and nobody would see you. I just think it sounds really, I don’t know, peaceful.” 

“Flying wins,” Diego said. “Sorry Ben, that’s like, probably the lamest reason for invisibility ever.” 

He hadn’t known it was a competition. 

He just imagined that his idea of invisibility was very close to freedom. If no one could see you, they couldn’t have you. You would belong to no one and be beholden to nothing. Like a living phantom. 

It was the summer before they turned twelve and Mom had taken them for a day at the city aquarium. They were all on their very best behavior; they knew any possibility of future excursions depended on that. They kept their voices to their most polite, indoor volume, did not walk ahead of Mom, didn’t smear fingerprints all over the glass tanks or shriek or run or any of the other nonsense they were astonished to see many other children partaking in. 

After Mom had paid the admittance fee, they walked down a long hall painted blue with murals of sea life—a loggerhead turtle coasting over a brilliant coral reef bursting with anemones and tropical fish and eels, like a colorful alien world below the surface, and dolphin jumping out of the water overhead, their slick backs gleaming with water. Then they emerged onto the first, uppermost level, where they found themselves looking down at a hundred-foot-wide aquarium which stretched down, down into the levels below. Inside, mahi-mahi and devil rays and hammerhead sharks coasted through the blue water. 

While that was an astonishing sight all its own, they were all soon drawn to the smaller exhibits, where a smiling aquarium employee told them about tide pool ecosystems and held a sea urchin in her cupped palms. They stroked the silky backs of stingrays as they came gliding by, their flat, oblong bodies propelled by the flapping of their sides, like wings, which would occasionally smack the sides of their tank. 

Getting to pet the rays was fun, and Six felt awed at getting to touch and see up close these beautiful animals he’d never seen before—but still, he felt sad for them. He wondered if they liked to be touched at all. They swam around and around in circles, flapping against the walls of the tank, unable to escape the hands reaching down to touch them. 

“They’re slimy,” Luther said, frowning. 

“Sort of like if you mixed drool and snot together,” Diego said, and Allison smacked him on the ear. 

“That’s disgusting,” she said. 

They weren’t _that_ slimy. And it was a good thing that they were—he'd read the plaque by their enclosure which said the mucous layer on their skin protected them from disease and infection. They felt sort of like the thing. The thought made him wince in sympathy and retract his hand the next time a stingray came swimming around. So much touching and petting all day long—were they wiping that protective layer away? Were they hurting them?

Then he felt alien for having a thought like that. He didn’t want to touch the animals anymore. He was a regular kid—the thing just happened to reach through the portal that was his body sometimes, that was all. He didn’t need to pretend to feel some strange kinship with these creatures. 

Everyone knew he was a terrible liar, but they had no idea how much he lied to himself. He did it so often it started to come naturally, like breathing. Sometimes he even believed his own lies. 

Octopus are invertebrates of the order cephalapoda (“head-feet”) which also includes squid, cuttlefish, and nautiloids. They possess eight limbs, or arms, and one venomous beak. Each arm is lined with hundreds of suckers, all of which it can move independently, thanks to its nine brains—or rather, the bundles of neurons in each arm that act as brains. A brain for each arm. 

Does it think with nine minds? Is it at war with itself? Does it experience thought not as a train, but a web? How does it manage? What sort of sense of self does it have—singular or plural? Does it experience a self at all? What is its secret to the lifelong matrimony of those eight arms and mantle, those nine minds? 

Number Six would like to ask these questions if he could, but he didn’t believe he’d understand the answers, if there were any. 

There was no one else to ask. 

The octopus’ body is soft, entirely lacking in bones. This allows it to (carefully, carefully) maneuver itself through impossibly small spaces, contorting itself to such an extent it almost seems able to turn itself liquid. It is a master escape artist. 

Being boneless is not without its hazards. Although its strength is considerable, its body is soft and vulnerable, naked and exposed. It is not the most proficient swimmer in the sea. 

To compensate, it must also be a master of disguise. By means of special cells (chromatophores, iridophores, leucophores, papillae) it is able to change both the texture and color of its skin in order to blend in with its surroundings. 

It can see polarised light. 

It can see with its skin. Its sensitive arms, packed with chemoreceptors, make it able to taste what it touches. It can breathe through its skin. 

It can shapeshift. It can squeeze its body into impossible spaces. 

It is highly intelligent. It possesses both short and long term memory. It has to learn everything it is going to know on its own, without being taught; parents die shortly after reproduction, without exception. They are all orphans. 

It is considered a delicacy in many parts of the world. 

All of these accolades are necessary to give it even the most remote chance at survival. It is not easy, being a soft, delicious sack of nutritious muscle tissue in an ocean full of cunning and powerful predators. 

Number Six wonders why evolution bothered. The octopus was a frail, ridiculous creature. Even pitiful. Its main method of locomotion was the act of crawling along the ocean floor by means of hauling its own weight along by each of its arms in turn, each arm straining forward like individual prisoners chained to the iron weight of its mantle. The movement looked like an act of mutiny; as if, could any individual arm break free and be its own creature, it would do so, tearing itself loose and swimming screaming away from the nightmare body it had been attached to. It could move faster by means of propulsion, but only as an emergency; the pressure created in the mantle by this act was such that the heart momentarily stopped beating. Even its dragging crawling motion was too laborious to sustain for long; the heart rate nearly doubles, and it requires long periods of rest to recover from even minor exertion.

Creation had a sense of humor. Give it bones or armor or teeth or fins or any of the other natural powers which kept its brethren alive, or else let its pitiful life end. Instead it survived by becoming freakish. 

When detached, the arms display autonomy; they continue to writhe, like a lizard’s severed tail. They can serve as a distraction, allowing the animal to flee while the predator stays behind feasting on its abandoned flesh. 

Did the mind in that arm know it had been martyred? 

Deception, camouflage, mimicry. Flamboyant expulsions of melanin-rich ink. Self-sacrifice of a part so that the whole might live. This was how it made its way in the world. 

Why did they die after giving life to their young? It was a mysterious, wasting death. They stopped eating. Their bodies seemed to at last realize they were only matter that had briefly dreamed it was living, and gave in to the formless ooze. 

They were older than trees. The earth knew tentacles before it knew leaves. 

So who was really the strange one? 

Number Six wasn’t stupid. He knew that They weren’t an octopus. He knew that comparing Them to one was only another sign, in a long list of signs, of his fundamental miscomprehension of what They were. Well, he was only human—or at least, his mind was given to all the flaws and blindspots a human mind was. Given something unknown, he immediately began making comparisons. It is like this, not that. But maybe not everything was like something else. He anthropomorphized—projected his human feelings and motivations onto other creatures he could scarcely fathom the shape of, let alone the inner workings of their minds. 

And yet, that was the best he could do. 

The greater part of him didn’t believe in his own wary cynicism. The greater part of him believed that They were not beyond the realm of his understanding—or at least, some common ground of fellow-feeling. Language would not fail him, not utterly. It would bend and stretch and grow thin in places where it didn’t fit, but he would stitch together his own cosmogony or die in the undertaking. Everything was like something else, in some way. Nothing was completely alien. Nothing was beyond his reach. Nothing needed to be Other. Whatever was Other was only what he had not yet realized his own relation to, what he had not yet incorporated—and it seemed to him that relate he must, that this task of dissolving every false boundary between the him and the not-him was the single task he must complete, under threat of mortal peril. His soul was at stake. 

Or maybe he was just being dramatic again. 

There was an octopus in the aquarium that day. All the way down at the bottom level, in the last room; a dark, circular chamber lit by the glow of the tanks. Its body looked like something someone had taken and squeezed, all listless and limp and wrinkled. Its arms were not exactly like Theirs, but it was certainly the closest likeness he had ever seen, and recognizing the similarity made him briefly dizzy. Was he seeing himself or the Other? He felt recognition, but who or what did he recognize? 

Its body was the brown, sallow color of the rocks it was draped across, riddled with small bumps and ridges. He got close to the glass without touching it, and stared. Before his eyes, its skin lightened suddenly with a flush of white, like milk poured into coffee, and the bumps smoothed over as the creature undulated and its arms curled faintly, worm-like and delicate, and by their motion the impression that each had a mind of its own came naturally, before he’d ever learned how true that was. 

He watched, wide-eyed, as a rosy flush came to the creature’s skin as it took on a ruddy red hue. One of the aquarium employees, a woman with dark braided hair standing out against her white uniform shirt, approached the tank and looked in with him. She smiled, her teeth very white in the darkness. “Crazy looking creature, isn’t she?” 

He nodded. He could not bear to be impolite to strangers. “I’ve never seen one before.” 

“Don’t tell the others, but she’s my favorite,” the woman said, glancing around and smiling secretly, as though the tropical fish in the other tanks might overhear and be offended. 

“What’s she doing?” 

“Right now? She’s sleeping.” 

“But her color’s changing.” 

He would think about the woman’s secret smile for a long time afterwards, and the way it sounded like she was handing him something sacred when she said, “Maybe she’s dreaming.” 

He had dreamed again of the other world. He saw things differently there; the illusion of order created by his limited perception was weaker. Everything glowed with its own aura, radiant with potential. Nothing was fixed. All was in flux, everything changing. When he woke, he couldn’t exactly recall the landscape or the shape of the beings he saw there; only vague impressions. They wouldn’t make sense in this world. They had to be met where they were, and understood on their own terms, or not at all. 

He found Five sitting in the library, staring down at a pocketwatch with a faraway look on his face. 

“Five?” 

His brother looked up, and blinked a fog from his eyes, as though he were looking at somewhere else. “Ben.” 

“Sorry. Am I interrupting something?” 

Five looked down at the pocket watch, then very deliberately set it down on the table beside him and shook his head. “No.” 

Ben got a sinking feeling. Five had become more and more insistent on expanding his power to manipulate space-time. Father had thus far forbade him from time travel, but Ben had never known his brother to be deterred when he set his mind to something. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Do you need something, Six, or is this just a social call?” Five said, sounding weary and ten times his age. 

Ben’s face flushed. “I wanted to give this back,” he said, handing Five the book he’d lent him. It was a work of popular science attempting to explain concepts of quantum mechanics. It had still mostly gone right over Ben’s head, but he could also recognize that it was far beneath the level of the sort of thing Five read now, and he had to wonder if his brother had found it just for him. 

Five took the book with a mechanical motion, as though his body were on autopilot while his mind were elsewhere. “Thank you. What did you think?” 

“My favorite part was the last chapter. The thing about quantum consciousness.” 

“That was pure conjecture,” Five said, making a face. “I’d forgotten they’d slid that in there...I should’ve torn that chapter out.” 

“I thought it was interesting to think about.” 

“Of course. They have to put in something fantastical, so that the concept is still interesting for the novices who don’t understand a single foundational principle.” 

Ben flushed. “So you...don’t believe in it, then.” 

“It’s not about what I believe or don’t believe. Belief has very little to do with the state of things at all.” 

“Well...if I understood anything in that book at least a little, then it sort of does, doesn’t it?” 

Five’s mouth quirked. “Perception. Not belief.” 

“Oh. Yeah, okay. Well, thanks for letting me borrow it. I know you must wish you had somebody who knows as much as you do, to talk about it with, but I still like reading about this stuff, even if I don’t get it like you do.” 

For the first time, Five focused his attention fully on Ben, as though he were finally coming to out of whatever stupor he’d been in. “Of course. But, Number Six, I’m wondering—why the interest?” 

Ben was taken aback. Why the interest? He’d never really asked himself that before; it just seemed to him that a lot of the concepts Five studied were fascinating, even if he’d never understand them the way his brother did. The same way he enjoyed listening to Vanya talk about musical theory or hanging upside down out of a tree with Klaus, debating the sentience of flowers, wondering how the world looked to a beetle. 

“I guess I just like wondering about what all this is,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the two of them, the room. His face felt warm under Five’s sharp gaze. He felt clumsy and slow next to Five, like all his thoughts weren’t worth the air it took to explain. But he pressed on regardless. “Like...I know I’m not really interested in researching or studying and I don’t get the really technical stuff, but I like to wonder about this kind of stuff. I even sort of like that I don’t understand? I guess I like that the world is mysterious, and the ways we try to understand it are really interesting, and I...I sort of love the ways people try and explain it to themselves, and to each other. I guess I like stories, and I like people. I know that’s not really the point, or really scientific at all. But that’s what I read it for, I guess—not really to understand what a quantum particle is, but for the story of us being so curious, and knowing so little, but still trying so hard to find out and tell each other about it. I don’t know.” 

Five stared at him a moment, and Ben squirmed. Five looked down at the book. “You’re right. That’s not very scientific.” He looked back up at Ben with his strange, somehow endearing half-smile. “But it is very Number Six.” Five fidgeted with the book, running his thumb up and down its spine. 

Ben looked down, tugging on his sleeves, pulling them down over his hands. He shivered as the thing curled up and down his spine, stretching beneath his skin. He pressed one hand to his stomach, wincing faintly. The older he grew, the more it seemed they jostled for space, clashing in the confines of their body. He was forever right on the cusp of nausea, a low-grade queasiness so ever-present he had almost gotten used to it, like white noise in his body. 

He swallowed the nausea down, forging ahead as though it weren’t there. If he gave in, he’d spend half his life in bed, waiting for it to fade. He’d be waiting a very long time. 

“I wanted to ask you something,” he said, “but I think you might laugh at me.” 

“Is being laughed at so bad you’d rather never settle your curiosity?” Five said, with a faint smirk. 

“No. But really, think about it for a second before you reply, ‘cause I’m being serious.” 

“Out with it.” 

“You can jump across space...and through time, too, even if you aren’t really sure how that works yet.” 

Five nodded warily for him to go on. 

Ben squirmed, a sheepish, almost self-deprecating smile proceeding his words, as though eager to admit he knew how foolish he sounded before he even opened his mouth. “What about jumping sideways?” 

Five blinked, but that was the only reaction he gave. “Sideways.” 

“Yeah.” When Five just continued staring at him, Ben went on. “Somewhere that’s not here. Not just another point in space, and not another point in time.” He waited. Five was silent. Cringing, Ben said, “Another...dimension?” 

Five looked out the window, dismissive, his finger still rubbing up and down the spine of the book. “You’ve read too many novels, Number Six. The use of the term dimension in that way is pure science fiction. There may well be more dimensions, and in fact there are, in theoretical mathematics, but they aren’t—” 

“Okay, that’s the wrong word, but I don’t have another one. I don’t have the right words, nobody’s come up with them yet, at least not that I’ve heard.” 

“You’re asking me if I can jump through something other than space and time.” 

“I guess?” 

“Through what? It doesn’t make any sense.” 

“No. It doesn’t,” he said, glancing behind him. No one was there. Still, he lowered his voice. Why was he so nervous all of a sudden? “That’s the thing. Five, where...where are _They_ coming from?” 

Five flicked his gaze down to Ben’s stomach, then back at the window. His jaw was tense, the muscles in his face held tight. “You know I can’t possibly tell you that. They could be coming from Atlantis, for all we know. From any point in space and time. Isn’t that enough possibility for you? The whole of the universe? Do you have to invent other dimensions to make sense of it?” 

“So you’re like Them, is what you’re saying. It’s the same mechanics, how you jump and how They...you know.” 

Five frowned. “No. Yes. Father says you’re a kind of ‘portal,’ another word that’s gotten too bogged down in popular fantasy to be any use to us. Like an anchor. If it was what I do, They wouldn’t need you at all, would they?” 

“That’s what I’m trying to ask you.” 

“Well, what do you think? They’re your...thing.” 

Ben looked at his brother. He took a breath, and decided to trust Five. “I don’t think it works how Father says. I don’t just...summon Them. I can’t do that, because...because that would mean they go away afterwards. I have these dreams, sometimes? And these memories of things that haven’t happened to me, and places I haven’t been—but it’s not another place. They aren’t just on another planet, coming through a portal ‘cause I snapped my fingers. I don’t think They come from another place, or another time, not like you can do, anyway.” 

“Then where do They come from?” 

“I don’t know or I wouldn’t be asking you, would I?” 

“But you have an idea. That’s why you’re talking to me. Tell me, Six.” 

“I think...They come from me.” Five stared, waiting for him to go on. “Or I come from Them. It’s like there’s...imagine there’s a piece of glass, and it’s got two pictures on it, right? And one is sort of carved into the glass, and the other is painted on top. There’s this place, where you guys all live, painted on, and then there’s the same place, running right underneath it. Does that make any sense?” 

“No.” 

“Oh.” 

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe you. That doesn’t mean you’re not accurately describing what you perceive.” 

“Can you...not mention this, to the others? Or to Dad?” 

“It hadn’t even occurred to me to do so.” 

“Thanks. It’s just—I don’t know what I’m talking about yet, and until I’m more sure, I don’t want...I don’t want to change things.” 

“You think they might see you differently, if you told them this.” 

“Do you?” 

“No. But I understand your concern.” 

Five looked down. When he met Ben’s eyes again, his gaze burned with an almost frantic intensity. “I have to tell you something,” he blurted. 

“Uh...sure?” 

“This isn’t the only reality. In fact, it’s not even the main branch. No. Let me start over. I’ve been in contact with my other consciouses across different instances of reality. I—there's —I experienced coherence between realities? They aren’t memories, exactly, or they are, but it’s more like the memory of a story, not of experience? Although I’m not sure how to clarify the distinction. Do you understand?” 

“Probably not, but like—I think I get it.” 

Five laughed, sounding a touch hysterical. “Get it? No, you don’t. You can’t possibly. You think you do, you’re probably imagining some kind of Star Trek mirror universe stupidity, and that’s not—but you’re taking this very well. That’s good.” 

“Is it?” 

“I’m not sure how stable or unique this...instance? Let’s call it an instance. I’m not sure how stable or unique it is. Will it collapse on itself? Will it be eclipsed by the main branch, and rendered null? Will we get caught in a loop? Could I jump to one of those other instances?” 

“Jumping sideways!” 

“No, not jumping sideways! At least, not like you used the phrase before. It’s too insane to imagine there’s any continuity between the phenomena you and I experience, and yet, that only makes me suspect all the more that they’re somehow two expressions of the same freakish quirk of nature. The Phenomena itself must be part of some larger pattern, don’t you think?” Five squeezed the book in his hands, the manic look in his eye almost pleading. “But what? What do you get when you take into account what you and I do, together, and then try to figure in the others?” 

“Maybe it is all different expressions of the same thing, like you say...but it could also just be random. Does it have to make sense?” 

Five barked out a laugh. “Does the universe owe us an explanation? Is that what you’re asking? No, but I demand one! Is that good enough for you, Six—that none of this is ever going to make sense, that we’ll never really know why we are what we are, why everything is? I don’t think it is, I think you want more than that.” 

“I...I do think it all means something,” Ben admitted, uncomfortable with his own honesty. 

“Of course you do! You like stories, don’t you?” Five said, standing and taking a step closer, looking feverish now. “We’re alike in that, we won’t accept nihilism! Now, I’ll grant you, the answers you’re looking for are...are fluffier than what it’s going to take to satisfy me, are couched in symbol and metaphor, whereas I won’t settle for anything less than, than an equation, nothing less beautiful than that, but—but you disturb me, Six,” Five said, gravely. 

Six flinched, and Five appeared not to notice, his eyes darting back and forth. “Whenever I think about it, about what you do—it just utterly destroys my train of thought, it dismantles every neat little theory I come up with. If I think about it too long, I think it might really drive me out of my mind, do you know that? How do you manage?” 

“I—what? Five, you’re scaring me...” 

“Three and Four, as well, though even they I feel, in time, with more research into the right areas—we've known ESP is a measurable phenomenon for years now, that’s old news, although we’ve only skimmed the surface—but what is it that you do, exactly? What are They? I try to understand my own powers, and I come close, and then I remember Them, like—like a mockery, like looking into a horrible funhouse mirror, like the complete bastardization of all my most deeply felt convictions, flying in the face of everything all good, all beauty, all truth, and I—I just—I'm older than I look, you know.” 

In a second, the frantic hysteria vanished, and Five was left staring at him with somber, dark eyes. Ben swallowed, his mouth dry, struggling to resist the urge to step back from his brother. He knew that would only make things worse. Whatever Five was going through, any hint of rejection was liable to drive him away. The best thing to do was not to avert his gaze, and face this head on. Even if his skin was bubbling and his stomach churning, and his feelings more than a little bruised after that tirade. 

“What do you mean, Five?” 

Five licked his lips, looking down at the pocketwatch. “If I went back half a second in time, what would that look like to you? Five seconds? How would you experience the disturbance? Would you even notice?” 

Five looked up and met Ben’s gaze, his eyes searching. Ben didn’t know what he was looking for. He didn’t know how to help. 

“Well?” Five said. 

Ben felt cold. “Five, you...it’s dangerous. You shouldn’t. Please, tell me you haven’t...” 

“It’s all right,” Five said, his voice hoarse. He was blinking too much. He looked...he looked on the verge of cracking. “I just need to understand. Everything has to be rethought. There’s that saying, don’t reinvent the wheel—but that’s what’s needed. In most of the other instances I became aware of, when my consciousness was merged, I spent decades trapped in a post-apocalyptic future. That hasn’t happened here, but my flaw is the same, you know. Not pride, no, nothing so lofty. Impatience. That’s funny, isn’t it? You’d think I, of all people, have all the time in the world—but it doesn’t work like that. It just doesn’t. It’s a terrible thing, Six.” 

“Five,” Ben said, his voice cracking. “Please, tell me how to help you.” 

Five blinked, and a film cleared from his eyes, and then his gaze was clear and alert again, and his posture straightened, and his face relaxed. He looked like the Five Ben recognized once again. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m sorry. I’ve been...I’ve been micro-jumping all day. I haven’t left this room or moved from this spot but you...don’t want to know how many times I’ve lived this past hour. And what’s interesting, is...is that I don’t touch anything at all. I don’t move, I don’t even so much as blink out of turn, and yet, the hour is different, because my perception of it is, and it’s only now, at the end, that you’ve brought me this book, that I see—how potentially dangerous that is. Perception. If I see things differently, have I altered the world, unknowingly, without meaning to?” 

“I really, really think you should stop, Five. At least take a break, and, and slow down. I know you, you’re the smartest person I know, but—but what if something goes wrong, and you get stuck? Please, please don’t disappear.” 

Five nodded. “I have more research to do. Research I can conduct without potentially stranding myself or getting caught in a loop. I’m sorry if my behavior or demeanor just now has frightened you. I’m disoriented. It will fade.” 

“You’ve done this before, haven’t you.” 

Five nodded. “A few times now.” 

Ben sighed. “Five, seriously...be careful. I know how much it kills you, to feel like you’re holding yourself back, but—but please, promise me you won’t time travel again. Not right now.” 

“Why should I do that?” 

“Because I’m terrified for you! Because this is dangerous, and reckless, and self-destructive. There are other ways to explore your abilities and learn about the mysteries of spacetime or whatever the fuck that don’t include using yourself as a lab rat. I know Dad treats us like we’re experiments, but I just can’t stand to hear you doing it to yourself!” 

Five stared at him for a moment, and then his soft half-smile came to his face, and he laughed under his breath. “I knew this was how you’d react.” 

“Well, how the hell else am I—” 

“And that’s exactly why I told you. I knew I needed to hear it. I knew you would...would care enough to listen, without immediately trying to control me or put words in my mouth. Thank you, Ben. I promise.” 

“Oh.” Ben was taken aback. It was that easy? Five, perhaps the most independent and headstrong of all his siblings, was going to listen to him? Why? 

Five was staring again. It was always like that, with Five; either he stared into your eyes until you had to look away, or he wouldn’t make eye contact at all, choosing a point over your shoulders to fix his gaze on and pretending he wasn’t doing it. Ben was used to it by then. 

“What else...did you see, in the other parallel universes?” 

“Please don’t call them that,” Five said, with a derisive wince that put Ben at ease. It was such a typical Five-expression. Five would be okay. He had known he needed help, to at least tell someone what was going on in his head, and he’d come to Ben, and Ben had listened. It had to be okay. 

“Really, nothing interesting?” 

“Nothing of note,” Five said stiffly. “This instance is its own. No use dwelling on unrealized possibilities.” 

“Well, I’m glad I’m in this version,” Ben said, knowing his outpouring of candor and sincerity would probably make Five roll his eyes at him, and not caring. “The one where you don’t go away.” 

Five’s gaze slid away from Ben’s, dropping lower. “I’m glad, too,” he said, his voice soft as he watched the thing twisting beneath the skin of his arms. 

They were thirteen, around the time Father had them make their first public appearance when Klaus introduced Ben to one of the house ghosts. 

“Come in,” Klaus whispered, looking left and right down the hall to make sure Ben was alone. “Sit down, get comfy.” 

Ben sat on the far side of Klaus’ Ouiji board, which was already set up on the floor with candles burning on either end of it. It was midmorning on a Sunday, but with his blinds shut the room was lit only by faint slats of gold sunlight which made dust motes glitter in the air. 

“Why all the secrecy?” he asked. 

“I don’t need anyone else knowing about this. I don’t want Dad getting any ideas about more special training.” 

Ben winced in sympathy. “I get it. But...what exactly are you showing me?” 

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” Klaus said, settling himself on the other side of the board. 

“One of...them?” 

Klaus nodded. “Yup. He’s one of the regulars. Most of them aren’t...the greatest conversation in the world, which I can’t say I really blame them for, but there are a few hanging around the house that are a little more...collected? Anyway. Hands on the board, please.” 

Ben placed his fingers on the planchette along with Klaus’. Klaus closed his eyes. Ben waited. Nothing happened. 

“Close your eyes,” Klaus whispered. 

He had no idea how his brother knew his eyes were open, or why it mattered, but Ben did as he was told and shut his eyes. The planchette began to move. He tensed up, but kept from opening his eyes and focused on keeping his heartbeat and breathing steady. There was no reason to be afraid. Klaus knew what he was doing. Just because the ghosts were an unknown to him, didn’t mean they were all something to fear. 

The room got cold, and goosebumps rose on Ben’s skin. The thing shifted around, uneasy. 

“Boo.” 

The voice spoke right into his ear, cold breath blowing against his face. Ben yelped and the thing lurched inside of him. His eyes flew open as he wrapped his arm tight around his middle, his other hand flying up as if to ward off whatever it was hovering beside him. 

Laughter filled the room, a deep mirthful belly-laugh. Across from him, Klaus rolled his eyes. “Great first impression. Really making strides here in living-dead relations. So freaking funny.” 

Ben caught his breath, giving a faint, queasy moan as he forced the thing to stay down, pressing his hand to his side and trying to think calming thoughts. That wasn’t easy to do with a ghost hovering beside them, laughing at him. 

“Sorry, kid, I just couldn’t help myself,” the ghost said, chuckling. “The look on your face though, priceless!” 

Ben stared in wide-eyed amazement. When he realized he was staring, he averted his eyes, not wanting to be rude. “Um. Hello, it’s okay. Nice to meet you.” 

The ghost was a faint, hazy outline, his body appearing full of smoke or fog. He was a scruffy looking man in his thirties, with a kind face despite the mischief in his grin. He wore an ill-fitting two piece suit, the jacket a tad too long for his arms, the pants a bit too short, exposing his tall socks. His tie hung loose around his neck. 

“Oh, kid’s got manners, now I actually do feel bad,” the ghost said, grinning at Ben. “You okay, kid? You look a little green around the gills there.” 

“I’m fine,” Ben said. He didn’t know where to look. The man had two holes in his chest and blood all over his white shirt. It was both impolite to stare and to avoid looking at him, so Ben tried to just focus on his face, even as it kept fading in and out, like a faraway radio station. “You, um, got me good. Sir.” 

“Aw, don’t sir me. You can just call me Tom.” Tom peered at him, eyes glinting. “You’re the one with the octopus, aren’t you? The quiet one. Ben.” 

Ben glanced at Klaus, who shrugged, and then looked back at the ghost. “Um...yeah, I’m Ben.” 

The ghost grinned. “Don’t look surprised. Of course I know who you are. What kind of ghost would I be, not even knowing who lives in the house I’m haunting?” 

Well, that made sense. Ben supposed that being a ghost, you wouldn’t have much to do all day. 

“Tom was a miner and a union organizer. He’s got tons of cool stories.” 

It was a real struggle, not to ask the question burning at the front of his mind: How did you die? Ben hadn’t expected it to be so all-consuming, but he could hardly think of anything else to say. “That’s cool.” 

Tom grinned. “Aren’t you going to ask?” 

“Ask?” Ben said, doing his best to sound innocent. 

Tom laughed. “Does that really work on anyone, that whole doe-eyed innocent kid look?” 

Ben flushed. “I—” 

“I’m just messing with you, just messing. I got shot by National Guard when they got brought in to break up our strike.” 

“Oh. Oh, I’m sorry, that’s...that’s terrible.” 

Tom shrugged. “Shit happens. No, I’m kidding, yeah, it’s terrible, and I’m still mad as hell. Probably why I haven’t passed on over yet, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Not unless the world ends or something. Otherwise, there’s still too much to be mad as hell about.” 

“Tom says Dad is the man and we need to stick it to him,” Klaus said. 

“What’s that mean?” Ben asked. 

“It means your old man is a real piece of work. Let’s just start there, to put it very lightly.” 

Ben shifted, uncomfortable. He glanced at the door, checking to see if he could feel anyone in the hall who might be listening. “He can be strict sometimes, but he’s our Dad, he’s only looking out for us.” 

“Look, I get it. My old man was no walk in the park either. Took me some time out on my own before I even realized the half of it. Sometimes it’s hard to think things could be better, if how things are is all you’ve ever known. You learn to be grateful for what you get. Then you get older and see they made you be grateful for scraps. And then you get mad as all hell.” 

Ben looked down at the board. “I’m sorry. But our lives here aren’t like that. If it weren’t for Dad, who knows what would’ve happened to us?” 

None of their parents had wanted to keep them, or else they wouldn’t be here. Without Hargreeves, Ben had a hard time imagining who would’ve been willing to put up with raising him, when it also meant raising the Horror. 

“Kid, if you only listen to one thing I say, let it be this—you don’t owe old Reggie jack squat. Got that? I don’t care if he’s made himself out to be your sole salvation, I don’t care about any of it. You don’t owe him shit.” 

“How can you say that!” Ben said, looking at Klaus, wanting his brother to back him up. 

Tom laughed, bobbing up and down. “Easily. If that sounded far-fetched to you, listen to this, I’m about to blow your mind—forget about earning anything. Forget about deserving, forget owing. You kids don’t have to earn being taken care of—having food, a roof over your heads. That’s not something you ‘earn’ by being good and doing what Dad says. That’s not a gift he’s given you that you now have to make up to him. That’s free. Forget about earning his love or his respect, either. Do I sound like I’m being too harsh? I’m trying to save you a lot of grief. A lot of time wasted. Maybe that’s impossible. Maybe everybody has to figure that shit out for themselves before it really sinks in. But at least you can look back and remember somebody told you, even if it was just some old dead guy—your life isn’t a debt you owe your old man. You’re already free.” 

Ben looked at Klaus. Klaus had a small, almost shy smile on his face, and his eyes were vulnerable and serious. The ghost’s talk frightened Ben, but if for no other sake than to keep that hopeful light in his brother’s eyes, he would listen. 

“I don’t know if I really understand...or agree with all that, but...but thank you. That’s a lot to think about.” 

“I know, first meeting and here I am preaching to you, sorry, occupational hazard of being dead—when you get a live audience, you don’t know when to shut up,” Tom said, laughing good naturedly. “Don’t worry, kid. Just think about it.” 

“There’s someone else here who’d really like to meet you,” Klaus said. 

Tom groaned, staring at the space opposite him. “Don’t do it, make that old bag wait her turn.” 

“Mr. Hawkins, my word, but you’ve got a lot of gall taking that tone with me!” 

Ben stared as another ghost glimmered into view on his other side. She was a small, elderly woman with white hair in a long floral house dress, her sharp eyes fixed on Tom. When she saw him looking at her, she gave a delighted gasp and straightened her oversized cardigan. “Well, hello—hello, little boy, hello there, can you hear me? Can he hear me?” she said, turning to Klaus. 

“Yes, ma’am,” said Ben. 

She laughed, delighted. “Oh, marvelous! Oh, oh, quick, what should I say—I should have thought of something before, good lord, what have you been doing with all your time, you scatterbrain, all this time to do nothing but think and watch and now you have your moment and can’t think of a word to say!” 

“Calm down, Miss Bailey,” Klaus said, rolling his eyes. 

“Yeah, can it, granny,” said Tom. 

She glared at him. “Don’t you take that one with me, young man!” 

“I’ve got a good fifty years on you, you old bag, some of us just had the good sense to die in our prime.” 

“In your prime!” she scoffed. “What a misery your life must have been, if you call that your prime!” 

Tom’s face reddened, but before he could snap back, Klaus interrupted. “All you guys do all day long is try to get my attention, and now here are two real live people listening and all you wanna do is bicker with each other? You can do that any time you want!” 

Miss Bailey fluttered her hands. “He’s right, he’s right, I’m wasting the moment—little boy, listen, Mr. Hawkins here may be an airhead, but he’s got some points worth considering, I’ll give him that—oh, you’re all perfectly darling children, you should be playing with other kids, out in the fresh air, not worrying about a thing, enjoying your childhoods!” 

“You should be worrying about a few things—like how your old man wants to use you like some kind of band of vigilantes.” 

“Yes, what if you get hurt? It’s very dangerous!” 

“What if you hurt somebody else?” 

“We’ve never hurt anyone,” Ben said, surprised. “We’ve only saved those people when the building caught fire.” 

“Yes, but that’s just the start—do you think the old man’s going to stop there? Law and order, law and order—he thinks he’s the sole arbiter of law and order! What happens when what the old man calls “keeping the peace” doesn’t look very much like peace, and you’re the one he’s ordering around? What then?” 

“Dad would never tell us to hurt anyone—we only help people.” 

“You’re all walking a fine, fine line along a slippery slope, kid. I’d get out before I got asked to do something I regret, if I were you.” 

“Before you get hurt!” Miss Baily said. 

“Before the old man’s convinced you that he gets to decide whose lives are worth protecting and which ones are expendable in the name of the ‘public good,’ which he’s already convinced you he knows best.” 

“I’d never hurt anyone,” Ben said, his face paling. “I’d never—I wouldn’t.” 

He couldn’t bring himself to say “kill.” 

He looked at Klaus. “Klaus, tell him—Dad wouldn’t ever ask us to do something like that, he’d never put us in that position. None of us would do that.” 

“I know none of us would want to, but think about this, Ben—Dad's obsessed with shaping us into some kind of band of crime fighters. You’re not stupid. You know things aren’t black and white like he sees them. Now think about what your role is going to be, if things escalate. What do you think the Horror is going to do, if he’s expecting you to use it like some kind of weapon against people he thinks deserve whatever they’ve got coming to them?” 

Ben felt sick. He wrapped an arm around himself, biting his lip. “We wouldn’t. We’d never. Dad would never. How can you say that?” 

“Because I see what’s going on, and I know it doesn’t have to go that way. Dad might not want us to think so, but we have a choice—there are so many other ways we can live, that aren’t the way he’s decided on for us. I don’t wanna be a weapon.” 

“We have...we have a responsibility,” Ben said, though his voice sounded weak and faltering, even to his own ears. “We can’t just...just ignore what Dad tells us.” 

“A responsibility to who, to what? You know what my responsibility is? It’s to be a good person, be good to other people. It’s to be a human like everybody else. Not to prop up Dad’s ego trip.” 

“It’s not that simple,” Ben said, his voice going high with distress. “I can’t just—you're already all of those things, but I have to be—I have to do more than just exist, if I’m going to—I can’t just be a person, I have to be perfect if I’m going to be good, don’t you get it?” 

Klaus’ sadness made his eyes look too old for his face. “I know that’s what you think, but it isn’t true.” 

Ben wrung his hands. “But what...what are the other ways? What will happen if we don’t do what he says? What will the others think?” 

“Relax, Ben. I don’t know everything, okay? We aren’t going to solve everything right now, I just...I just wanted you to hear this. So that Dad’s not the only person whose ideas you’ve got going around in your head.” 

Ben knew that his brother suffered a great deal because of his powers, and that much of that suffering was from their father’s continual insistence that he push himself beyond what he was comfortable with. He hadn’t really realized that Klaus could use his power in his own way, in a way their father would never have approved of, in a way that was so essentially a rebellion, so very Klaus. For something as simple as to see what else was out there, to find other voices and listen to them. 

It was no grand display of control or might, but it was more powerful than any of the ways he had seen their father encourage Klaus to use his powers. He wasn’t wielding his power like a weapon; he was letting it flow through him, like a conduit. It was more powerful than any display of strength or destruction—his power gave him the world. It gave him ideas. It let other voices speak long after they might have been silenced forever. 

Even though it took him a while before all that the ghosts said to him and Klaus, on that day and on days to come, to sink in, he was left with a deeper appreciation for his brother, who had found his own strength in the form of what their father might call weakness. 

The world seemed to always be asking him what he was. He didn't know. It felt like he was running out of time to find out. If he didn't soon, was Klaus right, and someone else would decide for him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you guys hate that I slid a couple ghost OC's in there? Feel free to let me know and I may...cut/reduce the role of any future OC's who may or may not appear. I felt they added something, by giving the kids other outside perspectives, which they don't really get as much in the canon verse, and which might have really made a difference for some of them and their choices...but if it's lame/boring to read, let me know, I can take the heat.
> 
> Have not had a chance to watch any season 2...it's out now, right? Thoughts? I'm swamped with reading/writing for school but I'm sure I'll get around to it soon. Also, if you ever feel like falling down a rabbit hole, reading about quantum mechanics and all its sort of fringe theories that are probably considered pretty crackpot by folks who actually get this stuff, like quantum consciousness, is pretty fun. Makes ya think.


	6. Lake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...bit of a more (relatively) lighthearted interlude. let these kids have fun. canon says no wholesome childhood fun allowed and i understand that but...my city now. the fluff is what makes the angst really pop anyway in my humble opinion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thank you to all of you guys! I was honestly surprised to have such a positive reception to that last chapter which, while one of my favorites, was one I wasn't sure would go over too well. The further into this story we go the more nervous I get about each update. :,)
> 
> I can't believe I've wanted to write this for so long and I've finally done it. I even found some of the little scenes I wrote back when I was thirteen and first read the comics and was able to refurbish them for this which is. Such a strange feeling. Also, the title is from [this Mountain Goats Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrHgZRGLgo0), because it amused me, but I'm thinking of changing it. We shall see.
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy this silly little chapter. I can be found on tumblr @stilitana where I'm normally...talking about weird fiction now, I guess. As always, thank you for reading.

For their fourteenth birthday, Allison begged  Hargreeves to take them to the beach. He said there was no reason to go so far if she wanted to go swimming; the public pool was right in the city, along with the two-lane lap pool installed on the grounds where they’d all learned to swim. She had been adamant that there was no comparing the ocean to a swimming pool, and privately, Ben agreed.

He’d only seen the ocean on television and in his dreams. When Allison brought it up as a possibility, he was hit by a wave of longing so strong it had to be Their feeling, too.

Hargreeves agreed to take them to the lake instead, and Ben had to hide his elation. It was too wonderful to be true, the feeling of expectation so amazing he was immediately afraid it would be snatched away if he weren't careful with it.   


Allison sulked at breakfast, saying that a lake was nothing like the sea, and would probably be small, and dirty, and smell bad. Everyone else was excited, which only made her more determined to be grouchy.

True, a lake was no ocean, but Ben was still happy to be seeing more of the world outside the city, and to spend their birthday exploring a new place. He woke up before his alarm went off, his skin all alive with ripples as the thing responded to his anticipation and excitement, and for a moment he felt like a little kid again, delighted by the strange joy of their linked existence, tracing the patterns the thing made beneath his skin and laughing.

He only hoped there wouldn’t be too many people there. Getting to see other people would be exciting but he wasn’t used to crowds.

He threw on his swim shorts and long-sleeved  swim shirt and headed downstairs, where Diego was already helping Mom pack a picnic basket.

“Can I help?” he asked.

“If you wouldn’t mind setting the table,” Mom said, smiling at him and ruffling his hair as he passed by to pick up the plates of smiling eggs and bacon (minus the bacon for Vanya), the bowl of fruit and platter of toast.

He couldn’t help but think that it would be faster if he could use all of his arms.

Then again, there was no reason to rush.

Out of habit, they all still piled into the car in the same order as always; One, Two, and Three in the front row, while Four, Five, and Six clambered into the back row. Seven sat up front between Father and Mom. Ben didn’t envy her; she was squished and had to sit very still and upright the entire time, and twist all the way around if she wanted to be included in whatever they were saying. She usually didn’t bother.

At least she got to control the radio, so long as Father didn’t find her choices offensive to his ears.

“I’m going to swim down to the bottom of the lake,” Diego said, sounding smug.

Three huffed. “Who cares about some dumb muddy old lake.”

“The lake is awesome, don’t badmouth the lake!”

“You haven’t even seen it yet, you’re just obsessed with getting to show off the dumbest power on Earth.”

“It’s not dumb, take that back! What’s dumb about this?” Diego said, and then went silent, presumably not breathing.

“Everything,” Allison said.

“You won’t be saying that when I’m at the bottom of the lake and you’re stuck at the top.”

“I hope no one’s drowned there,” Klaus said.

“Probably loads of people have,” said Allison. “The mob probably dumps bodies in there. It’s a lake.”

“What do you have against lakes?” Luther said, exasperated.

“They aren’t the beach,” Allison said, as if that explained everything, and in a way, it did.

A soft smattering of applause came through the radio, as whichever classical piece had been playing came to an end. There was a pause and then the next one started, with the plaintive crying of a violin.

“Can we listen to something else?” Diego whined. “We hear the violin, like, every day.”

Vanya clicked onto the next station and the brassy, full-throated voice of a saxophone came through over the quick, insistent rhythm of a drum.

“Change it back, please,” Father said.

“ Of course he doesn’t even like jazz,” Klaus said, leaning over Five to whisper in Six’s ear.

Ben wasn’t exactly sure what his brother meant by that. Maybe it was because the music had been improvisational, with several instruments that seemed to make a game of trying to break out and lead the song, somehow forming a harmony out of all those clashing parts--chaotic on the surface, until you gave in to the rhythm.  


Or maybe he was overthinking things again.

They left the outskirts of the city behind, and rode up a long, tree-lined road. Pine trees rose up all around them, bristling and dark against the sky. After a while they turned down a long dirt road, the car bumping along the uneven terrain, before the  trees opened up and a clearing spread out before them.

The lake was much bigger than he’d imagined,  its clear, glassy surface stretching into the distance. The car rolled up to where the road ended near a small cabin, and they all scrambled out.

“It’s huge!” Diego cried.

Even Allison seemed momentarily awed by the landscape. The sky was a soft, cornflower blue with long wisps of clouds like stretched cotton balls against the tops of the trees that ringed the lake, shielding them from view of the road. A faint breeze stirred the surface of the water, which ebbed and flowed in ribbons of shifting water according to its own mysterious currents.

“See anyone?” Ben whispered to Klaus.

Klaus scanned the lake, his face calm, anxiety melting  off him. “No. There’s...there’s one guy, way down there, with a fishing pole...but I think if we leave him alone, he’ll leave us alone.”

“That’s great,” Ben said, smiling. He knew that outings always meant something different to Klaus than it did for the rest of them, since he never knew what to expect from the ghosts.

“Okay,” Allison said. “This is pretty great. Dad, what is this place? How come we’re the only ones here?”

“I prefer not to be bothered,”  Hargreeves said, already striding towards the cabin. “Listen to your Mother, children. I’m working and I don’t want to be interrupted by any foolishness.”

He went inside and shut the door behind him.

There was a wooden dock near the cabin jutting out some fifteen feet over the water. With a whoop, Diego tore his shirt over his head and threw it into the grass, sprinting down the dock and launching himself into the water. He didn’t come back up, but then, nobody had really expected him to. Luther went running off the dock after him, cannon balling into the water with a tremendous splash.

“Hey Five, do you think you could jump with me way up there and drop me in the water?” Klaus said.

Five smirked. “How high are you thinking?”

“Let’s try and not break  each other's necks  immediately , okay?” Allison said. “You heard Dad, he’ll make us go home if you screw around.”

“You’re no fun. I thought you didn’t even like the lake,” Klaus said, sticking his tongue out at her.

“Well, it’s better than I thought it would be, okay? Sorry for having standards.”

The sound of shouting and splashing water drew their attention to where Luther and Diego were apparently trying to wrestle, although it looked more like they were trying to drown each other.

Allison sighed, tying her hair up into a knot. “Well, last one in is a rotten egg,” she said, sprinting off the dock and knifing into the water with a perfect dive.

“Show off,” Vanya muttered.

She looked uncomfortable in her navy one-piece suit, hiding under an oversized t-shirt. The night before, both she and Allison had hogged the bathroom for almost an hour, and Ben had overheard Allison explaining to Vanya why it was essential they shave their legs.

“But I don’t really want to,” Vanya had said.

Allison had sighed. “You can’t just cover yourself up all the time, we’re going swimming.”

“I wasn’t planning to. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“What if there are boys there, Vee?”

“So?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Just listen to me, okay?”

Vanya had sighed and relented.  


“You heard her, race you,” Klaus said, smacking Ben on the arm and sprinting down the dock, throwing himself into the air with a scream and going into the water in a graceless riot of flailing limbs. He came up spluttering. “You lost! Come on!”

“Aren’t you going to go in?” Five asked.

“Yeah,” Ben said, nerves making his stomach twist and his skin squirm. “It’s just...”

“You’ve never liked swimming in the pool,” Five said.

Ben shook his head. Really, he should be used to his brother’s memory for detail by now. The pool made his skin itch and sting and it irritated the thing. “They don’t like the pool,” he admitted. “But I don’t think it’s the water, I think it’s the chlorine.”

“How does it know it doesn’t like chlorine if it’s not, you know...even out? If it's wherever it goes, I mean,” Vanya asked.

He shrugged. “It’s never really all the way gone.”

“Oh.”

“What about you guys, aren’t you going in?”

Five made a face, staring at the water with distaste. He held up his book. “I’m good.”

“Really? You don’t want to swim?”

Unlike him, Five had never seemed to dislike their swimming lessons.

Five grimaced. “Standing fresh water is full of all kinds of bacteria, did you know that?”

“Oh. Well...people swim in it all the time, don’t you think it’s pretty unlikely anything will happen?”

“Unlikely is not the same as impossible. Even with a one in a million chance, someone still has to be the one.”

Ben couldn’t argue with that, even if it did seem like a tough logic to live your life by.

“Guys, quit hanging around and get in here!” Diego shouted.

“Coming,” Ben yelled.

He looked at Vanya, who led the way down to the shore.

“Just jump in!” Diego yelled.

Ben bent down to inspect the shoreline. “Look, there’s tons of snails here!”

“Forget about the snails! Who cares about the snails? Jump in!”

“And minnows!”

“We only have so long here and you guys are wasting it!” Diego screamed, as though every moment they spent dawdling on the shore physically pained him.

Vanya held out her hand and pulled Ben up. “Come on,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Before he throws a fit.”

Clutching his hand in hers, she ran down the dock. He had no choice but to stumble along after her, and then they were flying through the air and crashing into the water.

The thing jolted violently beneath his skin, shocked from the sudden running, then falling and finding themselves submerged. He gasped and sucked in a mouthful of water as it sent a sharp pain through his stomach, which soon settled to a dull, queasy ache. He floundered to the surface, coughing and blinking water from his eyes.

“Jesus, did you forget how to swim?” Diego said, splashing water in his face and laughing.

“No,” he said, coughing up water and splashing Diego back, less forcefully than his brother had so as not to encourage him to escalate.

“Good,” Diego said, grinning and launching himself forward, pressing down on Ben’s shoulders and dunking him under the water.

Ben flailed, trying to throw his brother off. He struggled to the surface and kicked away, floundering backwards through the water.

“Give him a minute, Two, geez!” Allison yelled. She was treading water serenely, making it look effortless and hardly creating a ripple upon the water’s surface.

“Aw, he’s fine!”

The thing was still squirming in his belly, trying to acclimate to the new surroundings. Once it had, a sense of happiness and peace came over them, a sense of something like a homecoming. He smiled. This water was alive and clean and moving, rich with oxygen and nutrients. This water was like an organism all on its own and caused them none of the discomfort the swimming pool had. He swam back towards the others.

“This is great,” he said, beaming.

Klaus flicked water at him. “I thought you didn’t really like swimming?”

“It’s better here than in a pool. This water is really healthy.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Diego scoffed.

“The water in a pool has got to be a lot cleaner than this,” Luther said.

Ben let the subject drop. He didn’t really care to explain how the Horror was tasting the lake through his skin, anyway. Telling them would only make it seem freaky instead of wonderful.

“Let’s play chicken,” Klaus said, trying to dunk Diego under the water.

“What about Marco Polo?” Allison said. “Nose goes.”

Klaus, busy being drowned by Diego, ended up having to be it first. His strategy was not so much to have a strategy as to rely on his wild flailing to eventually smack somebody. That worked all right in the swimming pool, but the lake was so large that they could spread out more, making his task difficult. Eventually he tagged Ben, who had no trouble swimming right at Diego and tagging him.

“How the hell did you do that!” Diego said, coming up for air. “I was under water the whole time, I never said Polo! You must be cheating.”

“You’re the one cheating,” Allison said, flicking water at him. “Using your power to sit underwater the whole time. How is that even fun?”

“Whatever, Ben has to go again, he looked.”

“I didn’t look!”

It was true—he hadn’t opened his eyes. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t see. The water was alive with information, signals traveling through it much clearer and brighter than they did on the land. Their heartbeats and every twitch of their muscles lit up underwater, giving their locations away.

“Let’s see who can stay underwater longer,” Diego said.

“Idiot,” Allison muttered, as he ducked underneath and sank to the bottom.

Ben ducked under as well, to see how long he could stay below and explore without his sight, using only their odd sixth sense. He could feel the movement of fish darting through the water or coasting along the bottom, his siblings splashing. It was like another world under the water, one he sensed entirely differently than the one above. Without being able to rely on his other senses, he felt like he was seeing things closer to how They did, or at least how he imagined They did. Instead of being afraid, he found himself curious. He didn’t want to have to go back up for air.

He waited until his lungs were burning to kick back towards the surface, the rest of his air escaping in a stream of bubbles. The surface was still several feet away. He kicked harder. Something moved under his skin, something buckled and shifted and expanded, and then his sides burned like twin brands and he cried out under the water. The pain only lasted a second, but the alien sensation that came after was almost worse. Had something sliced him open? How? Was something attacking him? He could feel the water flowing through him, inside him. That his chest no longer burned with the need for air almost didn’t register.

He broke the surface with a gasp, flailing in the water and splashing towards the shore as fast as he could.

“What’s the matter, Ben?” Luther called. “Are you okay?”

He couldn’t bring himself to reply, just swam for the shore as fast as he could, the thing twitching under his skin. He scrambled out of the water, chest heaving, and staggered away from the shore before lifting his shirt with shaking hands. He yanked it back down  immediately , his heart pounding wildly. He gulped and lifted it again.

The mark was still there. A slit running along his side, beneath his ribs, slightly raised and puffy, the tissue red and irritated. It was mirrored on his other side. As he tried to catch his breath, they fluttered open and shut with a wet sucking sound that made him grimace and shudder.  


“Ben, what happened?” Allison called.

He shoved his shirt back down and turned to face his siblings, all treading closer to the surface after him. “I...it’s...I’m fine. I, um...I got a cramp.”

“Oh. You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice cracking. He turned away from them and began walking along the shore, waiting for his nerves to settle.

Spying Five seated near the base of the hill where the cabin sat, he headed over to his brother.

“Hi,” he said.

Five squinted up at him, shielding his eyes against the sun. “Hello, Six.”

“Are you having fun?”

“Quite. Yourself?”

“Oh, yeah. Good book?”

Five looked at the cover of his book, something to do with codes and ciphers. He made a noncommittal sound. “It’s all right.”

Ben sat down next to him, propping his elbows against his knees and resting his face in his hands. “It’s nice here,” he said. “I wonder why Dad’s never taken us before.”

“Who knows why that man does the things he does.”

Five read quietly for a minute while Ben pulled up blades of grass and tore them in half. Five looked sideways at him. “Why aren’t you in the water with the others?”

“If I show you something, do you promise not to tell Dad?”

Five nodded warily, and Ben pulled up his shirt on one side.

Five stared. “I. ..take it based on your reaction that it’s never done that before.”

“No. What the heck is...” He paused, wincing, as the flaps once more fluttered open and shut, sucking painfully on the air. “Ugh. What the heck is that?”

“Well. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say they resemble gills.”

Ben groaned, burying his face in his hands, his voice muffled. “That’s what I thought.”

Five was quiet for a beat, considering his response. “You...don’t sound thrilled.”

“Should I be?”

“I guess that’s a matter of perspective. It’s...certainly not anything more obtrusive than you’re used to. Quite a bit less so, actually. Does it hurt?”

“Not really...I mean, it’s uncomfortable right now.”

“Gills generally don’t do well on land, so I don’t imagine that it is very comfortable, no.”

“It’s just...it’s just it would be sort of nice to know when I can be done expecting more surprises, you know? It’d be sort of nice to think, okay, I might not always like everything about Them, but I’ve got a handle on what They can do, and I—I know how my own body is going to look and act and be like at any given moment, instead of always getting blindsided by new freaky stuff all the time. I mean, I. ..it’s fine, I’m not complaining, or I don’t mean to be, I just...am a little sick of surprises.”

“I can imagine. I think that’s all perfectly understandable. There are very few things we can rely on in this life, and for a lot of people, until we get sick or grow old or confront our mortality somehow, our health and our bodies are one of them. That’s an illusion, of course. And one many more people aren’t ever granted. You aren’t alone in experiencing your body as...something somewhat hostile, or at least unpredictable.”

“You’re right. Lots of people have it much worse.”

“That’s actually not what I meant. At all. I only meant that your experience isn’t as totally unique as you might think. In specifics, yes—you're the only one like you.”

“Yeah,” Ben sighed.

“And that’s a very lonely place to be. But if you’re willing to imagine the world beyond yourself for a moment, and make some approximations, maybe you don’t have to feel so alone. Maybe there’s some solace in that, in thinking that other people have felt some of the things you feel now, that much of your experience isn’t singular at all, but might even be common. I don’t say this to make light of what you feel, or to trivialize it by making it common—quite the opposite, really. Maybe that helps. Take it or leave it. I don't know. Just thinking out loud.”

Ben thought about what his brother had said. He thought about all the ways being a person and having a body could be frightening and strange all on its own, of just how many human experiences were considered irregular, so many that it seemed the irregular was the norm, and the norm was an ideal existent only in theory. Who was really all of the things they should be?

“I think that does help,” he said. “You’re so thoughtful, Five. I wish I was like you.”

Five looked taken aback. “You’d have gotten there on your own,” he said.

“Maybe, but not that quick. I would’ve spent a lot longer moping and being self-absorbed,” he said, laughing.

“Do you mean that? You wish you were more like me?”

“Of course I do. Who wouldn’t?”

Five gave his harsh, sudden burst of laughter, the one that always sounded like you’d startled it out of him and made people who weren’t used to him wince. “Oh, you’d be surprised, I guess.”

Ben wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he just sat there pulling up grass until Five said, “Do they work?”

“Does what work?”

“The gills.”

“Oh. I. ..I don’t know. I sort of freaked out and got out of the water before...”

“They really shouldn’t, biologically speaking—there's a reason no mammals have gills, it would just be impractical for a warm-blooded creature to breathe that way, we need too much oxygen—but who really knows what They can do. Aren’t you curious?”

“Yeah,” Ben admitted, standing and brushing the grass off his pants. “Well, I’ll let you know,” he said, and raced back down to the shore, throwing himself into the water where his siblings were splashing.

They did work. They all promised not to tell their father, even Luther, after Ben begged on the grounds that  Hargreeves would poke and prod until he was satisfied he could control this new development and find some use for it in the field, none of which Ben was at all eager for. Diego was not pleased to have his territory encroached upon, as he saw this new manifestation of the Horror as redundant to his own powers, but Ben quickly placated him, saying the gills weren’t at all as useful or amazing as what Diego would do—for one, they weren’t as efficient, and he couldn’t make them appear at will, and they were so sensitive they hadn’t ever even appeared in a pool before. They wouldn’t let him breathe in an air-tight box, or survive if the air was poisoned with chemicals, or endure an oxygen failure in outer space. Plus, they were uncomfortable, and when Allison had accidentally kicked him in the side, he’d almost thrown up from the sensation. They were pretty much useless, in conclusion.

Diego seemed satisfied with that.

If it made his siblings secure and content, what did it matter how much of himself had to be denied and disguised and trimmed away? He would do so gladly. It was the least he could do, making himself small so they could have more space. When they were well, so was he. Their happiness was his own. The fruition of their dreams was what he dreamed of, hardly daring to dream any of his own. What could he wish for? He was caught between two dreams—one to be perfectly normal, and the other to do the impossible, the irreconcilable, and give in to his own otherness and find out what he was, without any reservations. Equally unattainable. Better to hitch his hopes to the shooting stars that were his brothers and sisters and let himself be carried along, if they would have him. It would be enough if only they threw him a bone now and then—good job, how are you, it’s good to see you. His name, now and then, spoken aloud in their own voices. That would do for him, he thought. You could make a whole life out of that, if you had to.  



	7. Sister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben & Vanya. Also, roller skating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello dear reader! You're still here? Still hanging in there with this way too long, way too reflective tale about a kid and his interdimensional monster?
> 
> Seriously, thank you guys for all the wonderful comments, I truly appreciate them. I'm having a ton of fun writing and sharing this story with you. Thanks for reading, take care of yourselves, love ya! <3

Of all their classes, English was by far Ben’s favorite. Science and math were interesting, but only in so far as the concepts captivated his imagination; he didn’t get any satisfaction out of wrestling with equations and trying to memorize the Krebs cycle. The big picture was all well and good, but all those itty bitty details you had to know in order to get there? He was fine leaving those to Five. History was all right. It made sense that in order to understand the present, you had to know something about the past, but there was just so much of it. Who was to say that the bits they were learning were the most important? Learning other languages was fun, and although he had no particular knack for picking them up, it always seemed well worth his time to study them. Art and music he enjoyed the way any untalented novice could enjoy them—that is, quite a lot, but without any real desire to study them seriously. Turning them into a class meant turning them into a competition, and competing with his siblings always put a damper on his enjoyment. He found sociology and psychology interesting, like he did most of their electives. Civics and economics on the other hand were the bane of his existence, and no amount of Luther extolling their importance could change that. Physical education was a wash. He liked to play games, but so much of their “training” was so fiercely steeped in rivalries that his interest waned. He couldn’t beat his siblings at anything, and he didn’t particularly care to, either—but because winning was the objective, it was difficult to find another reason to motivate himself. 

Vanya was the one who shared his love for their literature classes. Ever since they were young, they had swapped books back and forth so that they could have someone to talk to about what they were reading, and the habit continued as they grew older, and even as their tastes changed and grew, they never diverged very much. By late childhood, while he was obsessed with fantasy tales about knights and mages on heroic quests, she was burning through tales about unlikely chosen ones swept up in magic and historical fiction about girls who dressed as boys and became heroes. By the time they were teenagers, he was reading his way down a list of classics in world literature, while her taste took a turn for the dark. He couldn’t say he shared her interest in the horror genre in general, but he quickly became absorbed by the Gothically-inclined books she lent him. He tore through _Frankenstein_ and _Wuthering Heights,_ _We Have Always Lived in the Castle_ and _The Phantom of the Opera_ _._ Meanwhile she ate up _Crime and Punishment,_ _Beloved,_ and _One Hundred Years of Solitude,_ and gave up on but promised to return to _Moby-Dick._

Ben worked hard and spent a lot of energy on maintaining his own relationships with his siblings, and on running interference on their relationships with each other when conflicts arose. Conflicts didn’t necessarily happen more frequently as they grew older, but they changed. They ran deeper. It was no longer so simple to notice that someone was feeling left out and draw them in, or to soothe an argument.

The increasing complexities of their relationships were outpacing his ability to mediate them.

While their relationships became tangled and complicated, his methods for maintaining them seemed to stay the same. How long before he couldn’t keep up? How long before they all grew up and left him behind, still trying to make everything okay with a kind word or a game like a little kid? He felt like he needed to take notes just to keep up on where everybody stood in relation to each other on a given day. Klaus was still the sweet, vulnerable kid he’d grown up with, but he had a harsh, cynical streak now and didn’t even bother to pretend he cared about Father’s approval. (Something Ben secretly admired, but didn’t dare emulate.) Diego’s rebellious side, on the other hand, was expressed through constant strife with Luther and reckless ambition, and Ben learned all over again that he was grateful to have been Number Six, and not Number Two, watching the complex Diego had developed after growing up always compared to Luther, and always coming in second. Ben was so far removed from first place that sometimes he didn’t even register there was a competition, and there was a kind of mercy in that. Luther remained determined to follow the path Father had laid out for them, and his strong shoulders seemed far heavier with the weight of responsibility than they had any right to be, at age fourteen. Sometimes it bothered Six, the way he knew it bothered the others, how implicitly Luther accepted the burden of the responsibility. Who had asked him, anyway? Sure, Father made his expectations clear, but who among them had asked Luther to shoulder the weight of their lives as if they were his own? 

Six knew it annoyed Diego and Klaus especially. (“My fuck-ups are my own fuck-ups, don’t you dare try and take them away from me,” Klaus had yelled at Luther one night, when Luther had tried broaching the subject of Klaus’ dismal day in training. Klaus had been late and still rubbing sleep from his tired, shadowed eyes and Hargreeves had chewed him out viciously in front of everyone, while Klaus stood there looking bored, even as Ben couldn’t stop from wincing and cringing in sympathy as though the disappointment and judgement were his own. Klaus had sounded almost triumphant as he yelled at Luther, and Ben began to learn that there was another kind of triumph, the kind you could only realize after you had failed. Klaus reveled in that kind of triumph.) 

Meanwhile, Five seemed determined to pretend he was above getting mixed up in their petty conflicts, and continued studying his interests with a dogged determination that left little room for navigating the complexities of seven intertwined personal relationships. Allison had outgrown the confines of the house, and was perpetually looking for ways to get out into what she called “the real world,” as if the life they’d all shared here so far had been nothing but an intermission before her real life began. Any of her attempts to include Vanya in her “real life” plans only seemed to drive the two further apart. He often found himself comparing the conflicts between Allison and Vanya to those between Luther and Diego, but really, his sisters’ relationship was even more complicated than that. It was like the ways they tried to love each other just didn’t translate sometimes, leaving them both alienated even when they’d been trying to connect. 

And Ben watched and worried and ran back and forth between them, taking care, trying keep up and hold everyone together. 

One Friday night, he and Vanya were in her room, having planned to stay up late watching movies. They’d abandoned their discussion of what to watch first in favor of discussing their recently read books, which devolved into general talk about life. 

How many times they had danced around this conversation without saying it outright, he cannot count. They revisited it periodically, as if they had to confess all over again for the first time.

“It would be different,” she said, “if I were special, too. I know it would. Everything would be different. I’d be one of you.” 

“You are one of us, Vanya. And you are special, you’re—” 

“I know that’s how you see things, Ben—I know you actually believe that everyone is special, in their own way, and all that crap. And that’s a nice idea. That’s a nice way to see the world. But even you have got to admit, that’s all it is—it's not how things work in this house, and I hardly think that’s how things work out in the world.” 

“Vanya...” 

“And it’s okay. I’m just ordinary. Well, so is almost everybody else. It would be one thing, if I was ordinary and in an ordinary family. Then I could...then I could maybe do something that I could feel proud of, even if it was only a small thing. It’s this family that makes it so hard. I don’t belong with the rest of you.” 

“You...you wish you had a different family?” 

“Don't you ever wonder...what it would have been like, if our mothers kept us?” 

He sat there on the floor in her bedroom, staring at her, feeling hollow. He had wondered, of course he had, but not in any real, serious way. It wasn’t a fantasy worth entertaining. His mother had not asked to have him, had not wanted him—given the circumstances, he thought she had done the most loving thing she was capable of, by giving him away. Whoever she was, he felt nothing but love and understanding for her, and acceptance for the decision she had made. How could he not respect her choice not to raise him, when she’d had no choice in having him at all? 

“No,” he said. “This is our family. If our mothers had kept us, then—then none of you would be my siblings. I wouldn’t want that at all.” 

“If we’d been raised by ordinary families, I’d be the one who fit in.” 

It was true. Then the rest of them would be the weird ones, and he'd feel his own abnormality more acutely than he even did now. Did she feel robbed of that? “I guess so. Do you...do you think about that a lot? How if things were reversed, all of us would be the ones who were out of place, and you’d belong?” 

She shrugged, looking uncomfortable now that he’d spoken it aloud. “I guess. I just wish...if I could just have a small power, even something useless, just so I got to do what you guys do, and you’d all...you’d all treat me different. Don’t argue, I know you would. Yeah, even you. Because then I wouldn’t be the ‘baby,’ the odd one out.” 

“Well, you don’t just get to choose, you know. Have you ever thought it might not make things any easier, if you had a power? I’d trade with you right now. I’d swap places with you this second, would you? Is that actually what you’d want?” 

She shifted her weight, avoiding his gaze. “I didn’t mean it like that...” 

“Well, that’s what you sound like to me. I know it must be hard...I know it must seem like we’re always showing off, but...there’s nothing really special about me at all, Vanya. Some random, unexplained phenomena happened one day, and we all just happened to be born, randomly able to do weird stuff. To me, that’s not special, that’s just circumstance.” 

“That is like, the definition of special!” 

“Not to me. Special is how you’ve spent your whole life dedicated to music, practicing and practicing, and being able to make something beautiful—not because you just happened to be born with a beautiful voice, but because you were passionate and determined. What the rest of us are...to me, you can’t even compare the two. None of us has ever tried to be something other than what we were told. I don’t even know what I would have wanted to do, or be, if I’d been born like you, because it’s like ever since I can remember, who we are has been based around these stupid ‘powers.’ You’re special because you chose how you were going to be special. The rest of us just got handed some trait at birth and told to make our whole being revolve around it, and then we did.” 

“You’d really give it up? You’d rather be like me?” 

He looked away, automatically seeking the presence of the Horror under his skin, like a touchstone to ground himself with. There was strange comfort in feeling its presence that he had never dared try to explain to anyone else. “I...it’s complicated. This is normal for me. It's hard to think about what it would be like, without--if things were different.” 

“I guess I sound pretty insensitive. I know...I know you guys didn’t choose this. I know I wouldn’t have gotten to choose, and I might have ended up with something like you or Klaus, something that’s...difficult.” 

“It’s not...it’s hard to say that I’d give it up, because I don’t really know who I’d be without it, you know? But yeah, it’s not really about being...to me, it doesn’t make me special. Not in any way that matters. It's just how I am.” 

The trouble was, the Horror wasn't useful. Not like any of his siblings powers could be. Hargreeves conceived of them as an unthinking, elemental force to be controlled, and in that way weaponized, but Ben didn’t want that at all, and it wasn’t in Their nature either. They weren’t... _for_ anything, they just were. It felt wrong to even think of Them in terms of usefulness. They were alive—wasn't that enough? What was any living thing for? 

They were halfway through their first movie ( _Spirited Away_ ) when Allison knocked on the door and called, “Vanya?” 

“Yeah?” Vanya said, pausing the movie. 

“Is Six in there? Can I come in?” she said, not waiting for a reply before pushing the door open. She was dressed in her casual clothes—high-waisted leggings and a cropped yellow and pink tie-dye shirt, her hair braided down her back. She’d started wearing hints of makeup recently—shimmery lip gloss and eyeshadow, mascara. He'd been there with her and Klaus when they'd snuck out and bought a pile of cheap cosmetics at the convenience store, stayed up late watching them paint each other's faces with garish colors, their laughter with an edge to it, and he'd known this meant something to them he couldn't quite see. “Whatcha doing?” 

“Watching a movie. We just started, we can go back to the beginning if you want to—” 

She cut him off. “Staying in and watching a movie? It’s Friday night! No class tomorrow! Come on, we’re all going roller skating.” 

“Oh. Really?” 

“Yeah, so hurry up and get ready.” 

“Dad said it’s okay?” 

“Yup. So unless you’d rather be shut-ins, come on and let’s go.” 

Ben got to his feet, stepping towards the door, only to stop when Vanya spoke up. “We planned to stay in and watch movies tonight all week.” 

Caught now in the middle of the room between his two sisters, Ben looked back and forth between them. “Well...but the movies will still be there tomorrow.”

“So will the roller rink. You just told me this morning you were tired and wanted to stay in.” 

“You’re always tired, come on!” Allison said. “Loosen up a little, Vee. I promise you’ll be back before curfew,” she said, rolling her eyes. 

Ben knew how this went. Allison convinced them all to do something, acting like it was a matter of life and death that everyone join in, only to proceed to ignore most of them once she’d gotten her way or make snarky remarks if she thought they didn’t look like they were having enough fun. Still. He didn't want to be left out.

“Everyone else is going, Vanya,” he said. “We can still stay up and watch movies after.” 

She stared at him for a second, her eyes dark and uncompromising. Then she stood and brushed past him, bumping her shoulder against his as she walked over to her closet. “Fine. Get out of my room, I’ll meet you downstairs.”

Before he’d even finished tying the laces on his rented skates, Ben already regretted not staying in with Vanya. He was tired, too tired to enjoy himself out in public where he had to constantly monitor every bodily sensation to keep from giving himself away, giving Them away. There were too many people here, too much noise. He wasn’t even any good at skating. 

“Oh my god,” Allison said, her voice hushed and hollowed by dawning horror. He jerked his head up to stare at her. “No...” 

She was looking down the bench, where three girls had just sat down with their skates. She turned her back to them quickly, facing the rest of them with wide eyes. 

“I know one of those girls,” she whispered. 

“What?” Luther said. “How do you know them?” 

“Don’t make a scene,” she hissed. “It’s not a big deal. I met her online, we did a project together for school, and we sort of became penpals. We’ve met up a couple of times, but...but she doesn’t know who we are.” 

They’d all had opportunities to collaborate with other students as part of their homeschooling curriculum, but Allison was the only one who'd taken much personal initiative with it. It wasn’t surprising that she’d become casual friends with some of the other students, but that she’d been lying to keep her identity a secret—well. Ben could understand that. 

“How does she not know?” Diego scoffed. 

“We’re hardly celebrities, Diego, come on. We’re minors, Dad’s kept our identities out of the press, he's got influence, it isn’t that hard to hide. Or at least, it wasn’t.” Allison fixed a fierce glare on all of them. “None of you are going to tell them. Do not fuck this up for me. Got it?” 

Diego held up his hands. “Okay, okay, geez! What do I care what you tell your dumb friends?” 

“Luther? Klaus? Not one word. Not one word.” 

“Why do you have to lie to them? What’s the problem with them knowing who you are?” Luther asked. 

“Because I want my own, normal friends, okay?” 

“Oh, so we’re not good enough for you. I see how it is,” Klaus said, smirking. “Thanks a bunch, sis.” She glared at him and he laughed. 

She didn’t bother scolding Five or Vanya, assuming they wouldn’t care enough to give her away. She turned her glare on Ben. “They can’t suspect a thing, Ben.” 

He gulped. “That’s a lot of pressure, Allison, m-maybe we should just go—” 

“Allison?” 

“Charlotte!” 

They all stared as one of the girls came striding towards them, holding the laces of her skates. She was a little taller than Allison, wearing shorts and a baggy shirt with the faded logo of some summer camp on the front, her long hair tied in a ponytail she wore flopped over one shoulder, the tips of it dyed pink. Charlotte smiled, surprised and excited, as she enveloped Allison in a quick hug before turning her gaze on the rest of them. “Oh my god. Is this, like, your whole family?” 

“Yeah, these are my siblings,” Allison said. “Guys, this is Charlotte.” She went down the list, rattling off their names in order. 

Charlotte laughed. “It’s nice to finally have faces to put to the names.” 

“Oh yeah? You know our names?” Klaus said, grinning and wrapping one arm around Allison, wobbling and almost falling over as he stood in his skates. “What’s she told you about us?” 

Charlotte grinned. There was something reserved about her eyes, Ben thought, but her smiles seemed genuine. “You’re the one who steals her clothes.” 

Klaus flushed, but his grin didn’t falter. “If someone weren’t so stingy about _sharing,_ then maybe—” 

“All right, get off of me,” Allison said, shrugging his arm off of her but putting her hand on his shoulder to keep him from falling over. “I had no idea you'd be here, it’s so good to see you.” 

They learned that Charlotte went to one of the city’s public high schools, was fourteen just like them, and played basketball. While Ben knew that her life was the more ‘normal’ one, it was still strange to have her be so interested in how they lived, when to him it seemed her days must be more exciting, going to school with so many other kids every single day. 

“So you’re all homeschooled together?” Charlotte asked, staring in fascination. “I mean, I know you told me that, but it’s kind of sinking in. Doesn’t that get cramped after a while, or is your house just huge or something?” 

“It’s a pretty big house,” Allison said. She seemed nervous talking to her friend in front of them, and quickly took Charlotte’s hand and pulled her onto the rink. “Come on, let’s skate.” 

“Wait a second—hey Jade, Zoe, come over here, this is Allison.” 

Charlotte’s friends came over to join them. Zoe was a tall, thin girl who couldn’t seem to stop smiling and looking them all up and down. She looked like she was constantly trying to suppress a giggle that desperately wanted to come out. Jade was shorter and her smile was shy, her dark curly hair cut short and her eyes a warm, rich brown. 

“Wow. You have _so_ many brothers,” Zoe said, laughing. 

“I guess I do. Lucky me,” Allison said, and Zoe laughed again, like that had been a hilarious joke. 

“And Vanya,” Diego said, oblivious to the glare Vanya shot at him. 

“Don’t even bother telling me all your names all at once, I won’t remember,” Zoe said, snorting. 

Charlotte rolled her eyes, looking at Allison, who smiled tentatively back, like they were sharing some inside joke. “Come on, don’t harass them, they didn’t come here to hang out with you. Let’s skate.” 

Allison disappeared across the rink with the three girls. For a moment they all sat there, shellshocked. Then Diego said, in a loud, incredulous voice, “Did she just _ditch_ us?” 

“No,” Luther said immediately. “She’s allowed to have...other friends. It’s fine.” 

Klaus snorted. “Can you say that again? It’s just it sounded like it was really painful, is all.” Luther glared at him. 

“This was her idea!” Diego said, as if what had just occurred were high treason. “And she just leaves us?” 

“She said she didn’t know they’d be here,” Ben said, and Diego looked at him, as though he were now party to the betrayal. 

“What, so you’re just fine with it then?” 

“I...yeah? What else am I supposed to be?” 

“Unbelievable,” Diego muttered, shaking his head. “The little traitor.” 

“You spend all day, every day with her, I think you can survive for one night,” Vanya snapped. 

“It’s not that, it’s the principle of the thing!” 

“And what’s that? That we’re all supposed to act like it’s us against the rest of the world for the rest of our lives?” she said. 

He gaped at her, mouth opening and closing for a moment before he said, “Yes.” 

“Grow up,” she muttered, standing and skating onto the rink by herself. Five followed after her, easily skating backwards and keeping her pace. Show off. 

"What's gotten into _her?_ " Diego stood there for a second, dumbfounded, before he shook off whatever grim vision had overtaken him and said to Luther, “Race you around the rink.” 

The two of them took off, weaving around the other skaters. 

“They’re going to knock somebody over,” Ben said. 

“Yeah, probably,” said Klaus, offering him a hand and pulling him off the bench. They wobbled onto the rink, skating much more slowly and clumsily than their siblings and sticking close to the bars. 

“We suck at this,” Klaus said. 

“It’s still fun though, even if we’re bad at it.” 

Klaus snorted. “Literally none of the others would ever say that. If they weren’t good at this, they’d be throwing a fit and saying we need to go and do something else.” 

“Well...I guess that’s their problem.” 

Klaus laughed. “Yeah. If you had to be good at things to enjoy them, I’d never have any fun at all.” 

“You’re good at stuff,” Ben said, even though that wasn’t the point. He knew what his brother meant, and he agreed. 

They wobbled around the rink a couple times, Klaus falling once when he tried to get fancy and skate backwards like Five, who came sailing past grinning smugly at Klaus while he was sprawled on the ground. 

“That little shit,” Klaus muttered, grinning at Five as he skated backwards away from them and flipping him the bird. 

Ben’s muscles were cramping. He’d already been tired out from running track earlier in the day. He tugged on Klaus’ sleeve. “Can we take a break?” 

“Thank god, yes. I didn’t want to be the one to say it.” 

As they got off the rink, the smell of greasy junk food wafted over from the concession, and Ben’s stomach growled. They untied their skates and spent some of their allowance at the concession, where they split a plate of nacho chips and a huge salty pretzel. They shared a large soda and sat at one of the picnic style tables watching the skaters. 

“If you were a musical instrument, what would you be?” Klaus asked, mouth full of food. 

Ben gave the question serious thought, as he always did to Klaus’ offhanded inquiries. “An organ.” 

“An organ! Damn, that was a good answer. How can I beat that, let me see...theremin. I’d be a theremin.” 

“That’s perfect,” Ben said, tipping the soda back and sucking several ice cubes into his mouth. The thing gave a funny yet pleasant shiver under his skin at the cold sensation of the ice and before he knew what he was doing, he was crunching the cubes between his teeth. He forced himself to stop and let them melt. “Hey, what do you think of Allie’s friends?” 

“I think shit’s about to hit the fan when One and Two realize how jealous they are.” 

“Of Allie or the friends?” 

“Both. Of the fact she even has any that aren’t them.” 

Ben thought about that. Was he jealous? He didn’t think he envied Allison her friends; instead it made him nervous and a touch self-conscious. “I don’t have any other friends.” 

“Are Tom and Miss Bailey nothing to you?” 

“Oh yeah,” Ben said, grinning. “How could I forget? But really, it makes you think, doesn’t it? I guess most kids our age have a ton of friends who aren’t also their family.” 

“Well, we have a lot of siblings. If there were only a couple of us, I think we’d feel like we were missing out on more.” 

“That’s true. But still. It’s weird to think about. Like, I’ve never...I guess I’ve never actually made a friend. We’ve all always been friends.” 

“Is that what you call it?” 

What if Father had only adopted a couple of them? Ben had never thought of that before. It was so horrible that he stopped thinking of it at once. No, that was too much—it would all be too much if he didn’t have each of his siblings there. It was inconceivable to imagine growing up, with all of its struggles, without each of them there supporting him in their own way. It was unfathomable to imagine that they wouldn’t always be there, all of them together. Looking out across the rink, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a great comprehension of loss. Potential loss—loss he had not yet experienced, but which nevertheless existed in the very fabric of the world. And beauty. It was all suffused with aching beauty. It was a bittersweet feeling. It was so powerful and vast it frightened him. It passed over him, and left him feeling quiet and reflective and humble. 

“Do you think we’ll always be friends?” 

Klaus licked nacho cheese off his fingers. “Unless you plan on finding some new ones and ditching me.” 

“I mean it.” 

Klaus looked at him. “Then yeah, I do. Don’t you?” 

Ben nodded. He did think so. He believed it as hard as he could, hoping that would be enough to make it true. But it didn’t make the lingering sadness go away, the sadness that felt much too old for him to bear. “Yeah. We will.” 

Klaus shook the cup of soda, making the ice rattle before tilting it back and finishing it off. “Do you want the ice or should I throw this away?” 

“I want it,” Ben said, taking the cup and pouring more ice cubes into his mouth. 

He wanted to say more, but just then there came the sound of a girl’s laughter, and Charlotte’s two friends, Jade and Zoe, came gliding over to the table on their skates, Zoe flouncing onto the seat beside Ben while Jade sat neatly opposite her next to Klaus. 

“Hey guys,” Zoe said, grinning and tucking her hair behind her ear. “Watcha doing?” 

“You know. Plotting, scheming,” said Klaus. 

She laughed. That was nice of her, Ben thought, even though she seemed to laugh at pretty much anything. “It’s Klaus and Ben, right?” 

“Other way around,” Klaus said. 

“No, you got it right, he’s just messing with you,” Ben said, trying to inch further away from her on the bench without seeming rude. He wasn’t used to having a stranger in his personal space and wasn’t particularly keen on it. “So, um, you know our sister Allison?” 

“We just met her tonight, but she seems great,” Jade said. 

“Yeah, your sister is awesome. It’s almost like, not fair,” Zoe said, laughing. 

“Yeah, both our sisters are really cool,” he said. 

He still felt guilty about ruining movie night with Vanya. She seemed like she was having fun skating with Five, but he knew better than to think her feelings weren’t hurt. 

“Okay, don’t take this the wrong way,” Zoe said, then cut herself off, biting her lip. “No, no, never mind.” 

“No, come on, you have to say it now!” Klaus said. 

“Okay, okay—don't take this the wrong way, but you guys are all, like, really normal!” 

“Zoe,” Jade admonished. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Klaus and Ben exchanged a look, quizzical and amused. 

“I wasn’t going to say it, he told me to! I just mean that, like, being homeschooled—I don’t know!” 

“I’m sorry,” Jade said, clearly embarrassed. “She doesn’t mean it like that...” 

Klaus waved a hand, grinning. “No worries, I’m just glad we could provide such a shining example of normalcy for all the homeschool kids out there.” 

Ben snorted, trying to stifle a laugh. “You’re not too bad for regular school kids yourselves.” 

Klaus cackled. He always laughed when Ben tried to let his sense of humor come through his shyness, even when he wasn’t really being very funny at all. He was kind in that way. 

“Okay, okay,” Zoe said, grinning and propping her elbows on the table and leaning closer. Ben did his best to lean away without being obvious about it. “So, like, what’s the deal with your brothers?” 

“What do you mean?” Ben said, wary. He remembered what Allison had said, how frightened and serious she had looked when she commanded them not to make the slightest slip up. 

Zoe blushed, glancing out at the rink. “Like, you know.” 

He really didn’t. He looked at Klaus, but his brother seemed just as clueless as he was. 

Jade sighed. “Zoe...” 

“What! I’m just curious,” she said, twirling a lock of dark hair around her finger. “Not the little one, the two taller ones, I forget their names.” 

“Luther and Diego?” Ben asked. 

“Yeah, those two. What’s the deal with them?” 

“I...they’re...I don’t know, they’re both pretty cool,” Ben said, at the same time as Klaus said, “They both suck.” 

“Tell me more.” 

“They’re both nice. You can just go and talk to them if you want,” Ben said. 

She gasped, giggling. “Oh, no, I couldn’t just do that.” 

“Why not? You came up and talked to us,” Klaus said. 

“Yeah, well...can you tell me anything else? Like, are they single?” 

Ben’s eyes widened. He looked at Klaus like a deer in headlights. Klaus just looked mildly sickened. Jade winced, propping her head up on one hand, as though she wanted to cover her face. 

“Those two losers? Yeah, they’re single all right,” Klaus said. 

“Really?” Zoe said, giddy. “For real?” 

“Zoe,” Jade groaned. “You just met them, you haven’t even spoken to them...” 

“Oh, lighten up, I’m just having fun. All the cute guys at school are taken!” 

“You’re ridiculous,” Jade mumbled. 

Ben didn’t like the grin on Klaus’ face one bit. It looked like trouble. “Hey, I could put in a good word for you if you want.” 

Zoe blushed, eyes widening. “Oh, no, don’t do that!” 

“Why not? Come on, it’ll be hilarious, they won’t know what to do with themselves! I wanna see them totally out of their depth.” 

“You summoned them,” Ben muttered, watching Luther and Diego exit the rink and come skating over to them. He supposed they’d seen them talking to the girls and gotten curious. 

“Hey. These two losers boring you to death or what?” Diego said, skating up and bumping into the table before crossing his arms. 

Zoe giggled. Ben frowned up at his brother. He knew he was just joking, but still, he didn’t think Diego should talk about them to strangers like that. They were all on the same team. He was supposed to have their backs. 

“No, not at all,” she said. “We were just talking about...being homeschooled.” 

“Oh yeah, we’re talking _all_ about that,” Klaus said. “Definitely.” 

“Oh. That is pretty boring,” Diego said. “Hey, I always wondered—at regular school, are the lockers really big enough to be shoving people inside all the time?” 

Zoe laughed. “Uh—I guess? The band lockers are, at least. I’ve never actually seen anybody do that, though.” 

“Oh,” Diego said, sounding oddly disappointed. 

Charlotte and Allison joined them. Allison was doing a good job of looking cheerful and carefree; Ben wasn’t sure that anyone other than her siblings would have been able to detect her nerves, evident in the slight tension around her eyes and mouth. “Hey. You guys about ready to go home?” 

Ben nodded, stifling a yawn. 

“It was really great to meet all of you,” Charlotte said, smiling. “We should do this again sometime. There’s a game on Friday, you guys want to come?” 

“What kind of game?” Diego asked. 

She grinned at him, as if she couldn't tell if he was joking or not. “Football. Our team’s totally going to lose, but it’s still sort of fun to watch.” 

“I don’t know,” Luther said, sharing a glance with Allison. “We’ll have to ask our Dad.” 

“Sure. Just let me know what he says, Allison.” 

“Okay,” Allison said, and for a second Ben saw through his image of her as his perfect, fearless sister; for a second he saw her hunger, her need to not just be accepted, but loved.

In moments like that, he really thought he understood her.

Back at home, he knocked on Vanya’s door. She opened it and stared at him, her expression blank. 

“Do you...still want to watch the movie?” he asked. 

“Will you even be able to stay awake?” 

“Yeah,” he said, too defensive to be believable. She saw right through him. 

“No you won’t. It’s fine, another night.” 

“Look, Vanya...I’m sorry. I know you wanted to stay in tonight.” 

“So did you.” She looked at him for a second, and said, “You think you’re different, but you’re like the rest of them. You’re just less loud about how bad you need everybody to like you.” 

He stared at her, taken aback. “What? Why do you say that?” 

“You’re a smart guy, you’ll figure it out. Goodnight, Ben.” 

But he really wasn’t. “Vanya, wait—don't just leave things like that, you can’t.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because—because come on, I want to make things right.” 

“Yeah, I know you do. I know you want to make everything right, and make sure everyone’s friends all of the time, and fix everything the second it goes even a little bit sideways.” 

"Is there something wrong with that? Of course I do.” 

“I just wish you’d stand up for yourself.” 

“I do. What do you even mean? I thought you were mad because we didn’t watch movies like we planned, where’s all this other stuff coming from?” 

“Jesus, stop doing that, would you? It hasn’t worked on me in a long time, the whole dumb and innocent act.” 

He blinked at her, completely blindsided, feeling too slow to keep up. “Is this because...is this because you and Allison are having a fight or something?” 

“Not everything I do is because of Allison, or one of you guys, okay? What, you think I’m jealous of her? That’s what everyone thinks, isn’t it?” 

“No, what? Come on, Vanya, I’m really trying to make up.” 

“I know you are. That’s what you do. You try, you try really, really hard, but you just can’t make everyone happy all of the time, Ben. You can’t have it both ways. One day it’s really going to mess you up.” 

“What’s so wrong with wanting everyone to get along? Of course I want you all to be happy. Maybe the rest of you could try it sometime.” 

“You’ve always let them have their way. When it comes to them or me, you’ll choose them every time.” 

“How can you say that? Just because tonight didn’t go how—” 

“It’s not just tonight, okay? If Luther says jump, you jump. I get it. Sometimes I used to think you just thought their opinions were worth more, because they were special too, but now I think you’re just scared they might drop you if you stopped being such a pushover all the time. But you know I’ll still be here, even if you don’t agree with me all the time or do what I say.” 

“That’s—I’m not a pushover. It’s just called compromise, Vanya, maybe you should try it sometime.” 

She laughed. “See? You’d never say something like that to Luther! Not even to Two or Three! Do they even know you? Do you even let them?” 

She was hitting much too close to his secret fear. Did they know him? Really know him, the real him, even all the bad parts he did his damndest every moment to prune away or starve out or paint over, as if he could be kind and polite enough that no one would look closer and see all of the ways he wasn’t either of those things? 

“Of course they know me. They’re our family, Vanya. You act like we’re all out to get you sometimes, and we’re just not.” 

“Family is just a word.” 

“Now you’re just being difficult on purpose!” 

“Yeah, well, that’s what I do around here, I guess. Just be an inconvenience to everybody.” 

“Why do you say stuff like that? It isn’t true! What’s happening, come on—we never argue, not like this,” he said, getting desperate. Nobody was making any noise in their rooms, and he started to get the uncomfortable sense that they were making a spectacle of themselves here. 

“Well, I tried to tell you goodnight, but you weren’t having it.” 

His chest felt tight. What was happening? He and Vanya weren’t supposed to be the ones arguing. They were both supposed to be the quiet and nice ones, they got along just fine; if they ever fussed with each other growing up, it was always quickly smoothed over. “I just—don't see why we can’t make up.” 

“Because sometimes you can’t get what you want just because you make sad eyes at somebody until they feel so bad for you they tell you what you want to hear, okay? I don’t feel like being happy and I don’t feel like pretending that I am and I don’t want you to fix it, I just want you to leave me alone.” 

She shut the door in his face. 

He wasn’t going to cry. He wasn’t going to be childish about this, the way everybody, apparently most of all Vanya, thought he was. He was going to be mature. He was going to consider everything she’d said, and respect her wish for privacy, and he was going to wait until she was ready to talk to him. He didn’t need to have a breakdown just because he had been unable to make any hint of conflict go away. Just because she got mad at him—no, that sounded childish. Just because they’d had a disagreement, or a misunderstanding, didn’t mean they weren’t friends anymore, and that she was never going to talk to him again, and that he was a horrible person who manipulated people with his emotions and deserved to be alone for the rest of his life. It didn’t. He wasn’t. 

He was having a hard time catching his breath. 

He went in his room and was grateful that nobody came knocking; that would have been more embarrassment than he could take, the final confirmation that they all babied him. 

That didn’t mean he was alone. 

Oh, it was all well and good for Vanya to want some time to herself, but what was he supposed to do, now that nothing was settled, and she was still mad, and he wasn’t forgiven, and They were crawling under his skin like vines, soaking in his feelings, making him feel all pathetic and sick with self-pity? That was no good. He worked hard, not giving in to self-pity. That didn’t mean he always succeeded, but he was aware that it was a major potential pitfall for him, one he wanted very badly not to fall too far into. Self-pity was isolating. It made you alone with yourself, it made the world go dim around you as you got absorbed in your own thoughts and feelings. That was dangerous. You could wind up far away from other people that way, estranged from the world. It was why he didn’t like to be alone with himself (themselves), it was why it was better to think about other people’s problems, why it was so important that he kept busy going around fixing, helping, taking care. 

So maybe there was truth to some of the things Vanya had said. Maybe.

It seemed like he had a choice. He could reject everything she’d said, pretend she hadn’t meant it or was just plain wrong, had spoken out of anger and not observation. Or he could listen. He wouldn’t change overnight, no, but he could absorb what she’d said, even the parts that had hurt, and then, over time, by remembering them and by paying attention, he could understand, and maybe choose to act differently than he otherwise would have. 

It wasn’t easy, growing up. He guessed that probably was true for everybody. It was hard to think that he'd ever be done growing up. He half didn’t believe it at all. He felt so unfinished, so inadequate and confused. When would he be better than he was? When would he feel grown up, and capable, so that it wasn’t so hard knowing what was right, or how to be good, so that it came easily and he didn’t even have to try? That was what it meant to be grown up, didn’t it? 

There was no one around to ask. He supposed he would just have to wait and find out.

The next day, Vanya behaved as if the argument had never happened, so he followed her lead and didn’t bring it up. 

Vanya and Ben did not have the semi-frequent heart-to-hearts that characterized his friendship with Klaus, or share the same degree of mutual comfortability with silence which Vanya had with Five, as though they didn’t need to speak at all to understand and appreciate each others company. They had their own ways of communicating—sometimes they said much more than either of them could with words, without speaking at all. 

She passed her copy of _Frankenstein_ on to him with bold, steady blue pen underlining: “I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.” Unable to make that kind of commitment, so that the marks could be erased and would certainly disappear in time, he handed it back with faint pencil beneath “It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.” 

Sometimes the lines were there marking a passage that had struck one of them as particularly interesting or beautiful, to draw the other’s attention; sometimes they felt like a self-revelation, safe because it could be denied as such; other times, it seemed like a question or a revelation for the other, even an accusation. 

He handed her _East of Eden_ with faint pencil whispers of: “But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.” 

She gave it back shouting in indelible red ink so that the book would have to be destroyed before the lines would go away: “Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic?” And then again: “And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.” 

It took him several years before he could look at those books and their marks without feeling a sudden, devastating hot flash of embarrassment. God, but they had really been full of themselves, hadn’t they? So pretentious, as if they were the first ones to think the thoughts they stole from books. And so sincere, and so serious about everything, they really must have thought themselves “large and tragic” after all. It was a good thing their other siblings didn’t know about this little act of ventriloquism, this passing of notes in other people’s more eloquent voices, a damn good thing, or they’d never have heard the end of it. 

And then one day, years later, he picked up one of their books, and he saw those little marks, and he felt no more shame. He almost forgot that he’d ever felt so embarrassed by them at all. He felt fond, and amused, and a little sad, but it was a sweet sort of sadness; he felt great love for both of them, for the children they had been and would always be, since they had been once, even though they weren’t anymore and never would be again. 

It was little moments like that which made him realize he was growing up. It was nothing dramatic. It wasn’t a single flip of a switch, or an obvious process he could measure. It was happening all of the time, within and around him, and he only caught it in small, understated moments like that one: forgiving the child he’d been. 

They were six years old and his sister had tears in her huge dark eyes she was trying to hide because all day long she’d been alone and waiting for her siblings to play with her, and then when they were finally done with training, one of them (she never did say who,) had told her that she couldn’t play with them, because she was only ordinary. Dad had said so. Otherwise, why wouldn’t she have been with them all day while they took tests and had checkups and had to do puzzles and tasks so that he could study their powers? 

He knew where to find her—she liked to sit in the window seat where she could see the whole yard, stretching all the way to the trees. He sat with her there sometimes and read or just watched the clouds. He stayed with her there because they were Ben and Vanya, and it was their spot, where the world was small and far away down below and everything was quiet. Ben and Vanya, Six and Seven. 

She hid her face behind a curtain of hair as she wept. He didn’t know how to console her, so he just sat with her while she cried, rubbing her back now and then, feeling lost. 

“Maybe you just haven’t found your powers yet,” he said. 

She shook her head violently. “No, there’s not anything special about me. You should just go play with them and forget about me. I’m useless, I’m holding you back. That’s what you all think, even Dad!” 

He pulled her into a hug. “That’s not true, Seven. Don’t say that.” 

“They all hate me.” 

The anger and despair in her voice surprised him. Sweet Number Seven shouldn’t sound like that. Who had hurt her so badly? “Of course they don’t! You’re our sister, we all love you.” 

“But I’m not really. And even if I was, that’s not a good enough reason to love someone, just because they’re your sister and you have to.” 

He’d never had a thought like that before. Of course he loved his siblings—they were his siblings. 

“I wish I could make it better,” he said. “It should be you who has powers, and me who doesn’t. I wouldn’t mind. I wish we could trade.” 

Of course, not powers like his—he knew she’d have something good and light, something beautiful and safe. Something everyone thought was wonderful.

“Do you mean that? You’d trade if you could? For me?” 

“Yes,” he said, letting her pull away from the hug and brush her hair away from her face. 

It was impossible, but if he could, he would choose to make her happy. 

But that wasn’t really the answer--it shouldn’t matter if she had a power at all. She was their sister. No one should have made her feel like this. 

And, well...and would he really give up his power? His twin? Wouldn’t that be, well...wouldn’t he be awfully lonely, then? 

He was still so young, then; he knew so little that to him, he was still the normal one, while everyone else was strange and somewhat monstrous in their singularity. Their heads must be so quiet, their bodies so still. They only had one voice to think in. In his mind he was struggling with language; there was the way he spoke, like everyone else, as if he was alone, and there was the way he thought of themselves sometimes, as a ‘we,’ an ‘us,’ a ‘they.’ 

He thought everyone else must be terribly lonely. 

That was why Seven was so sad, wasn’t it? Poor Seven, all alone in her own head. How horrible. He felt so bad for her, so quietly but soundly protective of little Number Seven all of a sudden.

They would just have to keep her company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Made myself second-hand cringe writing this remembering all of the tattered paperbacks my friends and I passed back and forth in middle school and early high school with our very deep quotes underlined...ah, youth. Must remember to be kind to our younger selves...they were trying their best!
> 
> I tested the waters with the ghost OC's-now meet the much more annoying regular-kid friends. They're not really going to have an important role except as a reference point for what sorts of self-discovery activities Allison gets up to outside the Academy, so if you hate them, your suffering is over now. Unless I include a frankly cursed chapter involving the horrible, horrible activity of a school dance. Might cut that. Might not. This is so, so long...
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading!


	8. Escape Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moral dilemmas and ethical quandaries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello! Bit of a change of pace here. Hope this chapter isn't too dull--I like writing about characters navigating a labyrinth, what can I say.
> 
> Thank you guys so so so much for your comments!! You've all been so supportive of this story and I'm honestly having a ton of fun reading your reactions and bringing you new chapters. As always, feel free to contact me on tumblr at [stilitana](https://stilitana.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Until the next update... Thanks for reading!

Their wrists and ankles were bound with zip-ties. 

They were fifteen years old, and with each passing week it seemed Father’s training became more intense, as did his apocalyptic vision of the future. 

Ben did not know what had convinced their father that the end of the world was nigh. Oh, there was no shortage of reasons—global climate change alone offered a cornucopia of desecration. But still, against a threat like that, what did Hargreeves imagine they could possibly do that would matter? A problem like that couldn’t be solved with heroes. Not like the old ones in the stories. No, it seemed to him only a change of hearts and minds on a massive scale could save them all now—a massive collective effort a complete change at a fundamental level—and yet, if such a change had failed to come about by now, maybe he was being naïve again. 

It didn’t matter what he thought about the end of the world. It only mattered that Father believed it was coming, and that they must be ready. Father believed, and Ben believed that he believed, and so he almost couldn’t hold it against Hargreeves, these grueling “training exercises” they participated in more and more. 

If you really thought the world was ending, and that you could stop it—well, weren’t you obligated to go to some lengths to ensure that you did? Because Father believed that annihilation was right around the corner, of course he didn’t care that they were all tired and just wanted their Saturday off. Whether the world really was about to come to and end mattered less than that Hargreeves thought it was. Because he believed, no amount of complaining or pleading would sway him. They would train and they would excel in their classes and they would not waver. They would be the team he had raised them to be. 

First, they had to get out of these restraints. 

Klaus was muttering curses under his breath and alternating between yanking ineffectually at his restraints and leaning listlessly against the wall, staring into space. Or maybe it only looked like he was staring into space. Ben hoped the reinforced escape room wasn’t too crowded with restless ghosts. 

Of course, knowing their father, he’d see that as a fair trial of Klaus’ concentration. 

“The rules are simple,” Father said, his voice crackling over the speaker positioned in one corner of the ceiling. “If all of you are out of the room by the deadline in five hours, there will be a reward. If none of you succeed in freeing yourselves, there will be neither reward nor punishment, and you will all try again next Saturday. If some of you escape, you will be rewarded, but those still inside will receive the punishment. Do you understand?” 

“What’s the punishment?” Diego asked, grunting as he fell over sideways as he struggled to free himself. 

“You should be determined not to find out. And because the focus today is team building, should you decide to cut corners and leave the room using Number Five's space manipulation, only he will be considered to have properly escaped. The rest of you will only have demonstrated a dangerous dependency. You cannot expect to always be able to rely on that trick. Good luck, children. I will see you all at dinner.” 

The five hours would be up right on time for their last meal of the day. One way or another, they’d all have to sit together at the end of it all and break bread, either as victors or failures. 

“Well. Heard any rumors we won and got out of here already?” Klaus said. 

“I don’t think I can do that."

“Worth a try though, isn’t it?” 

“Fine. I heard a rumor we were all in the dining room.” 

Nothing happened. Allison groaned and kicked at the wall. “Stupid powers.” 

“You’ll get there,” Luther said. 

“I sure hope not,” Klaus said. “Just because you can doesn’t mean you always should, you know.” 

“You asked me to—” 

“And in this case, yeah, you should! It’s just the implication, you know?” 

“Well, do you have any other bright ideas?” 

Five jumped two feet from his previous position, leaving his zip ties clattering to the floor behind him. He stood, dusting himself off. “I’ve been waiting for that to become useful. Finally.” 

They all stared at him. He stared back, frowning, until finally he cracked. “Really? That’s what you think of me? Maybe I really should just leave you here.” 

“Don’t pretend you aren’t thinking about it,” Klaus muttered. 

“If you ditch us and we all get punished because of you, I swear I’ll...” 

Five smirked down at Diego. “What will you do?” 

Diego flushed and glared at his brother. “I’ll think of something.” 

“Nobody’s leaving anybody behind,” Luther said. “Come on guys, this is a team building exercise.” 

“No. A team building exercise is going around the room and sharing a stupid fun fact about yourself,” Klaus said. “This is just torture.” 

Beneath his skin, the thing was moving around, probing at the restraints. If only it weren’t for all those pesky bones in his hands, they could slip right out. 

Could they anyway? If he let go—submitted completely to its only apparent interest and function, that of warping their body like putty—could it alter them so much that without any struggle, they would be free? 

He knew that the very purpose of these exercises was just that sort of creative experimentation with their powers, but he didn’t dare try. One of the others would get him out. They wouldn’t leave him. 

Luther brought his wrists to his mouth and tightened the zip ties with his teeth. With a grunt, he lifted his hands over his head and brought them down in one swift, sure motion into his stomach. The zip tie broke off at the locking mechanism, freeing him. 

“It’s not torture, it’s training,” Luther said. “Come on, Four, take this seriously.” 

“That’s like asking pigs to fly,” Diego scoffed. 

“I can be serious,” Klaus said. 

“Oh yeah? ‘Cause I sure haven’t seen it.” 

“Only about things worth taking seriously. Not this.” 

“What is more serious than this?” Luther said. “We have a responsibility to the world, Klaus. We have to be ready.” 

“Ready for what? Come on, do you really, actually, honestly believe all that crap about us saving the world?” 

The frown Luther gave him was all the answer he needed. “It’s what we’re here for.” 

Klaus laughed. “Maybe that’s what you’re here for, but not me.” 

“Don’t sound so condescending,” Allison said. “At least Luther’s got a sense of purpose. What are you here for, then?” 

“Nothing,” Klaus said, sounding smug and pleased as he smiled blithely at her. “Absolutely nothing.” 

Diego tightened his restraints as Luther had and drove his hands into his stomach. He flinched and knocked the breath out of himself, but they didn’t break. Meanwhile Luther had torn the restraints off his ankles, although he’d left raised red lines behind on his own skin in doing so. 

“Can’t you just zap us all out of here?” Klaus asked. 

“I could. Or I could exhaust myself jumping multiple times with other people and end up splicing us together or landing inside a wall.” 

“Jesus,” Diego swore. “Seriously?” 

“How’d you figure that out?” Klaus said, wincing. “Please don’t say experience.” 

“I think one day I’ll be able to do it. But I need to keep practicing.” Five frowned. “I’d be further along by now, if Dad wasn’t so...methodical. I understand the reasoning behind slow, gradual progress, but I don’t have time.” 

“He doesn’t have time,” Klaus said, snorting. “Get it? It’s funny ‘cause he can—” 

“You’re still a kid, Five. I think you’ve got time,” Allison said. 

Five’s wry twist of a smile was not a reassuring sight. He made no reply otherwise. 

Allison tightened and broke her zip ties, smirking at Diego before reaching up and removing a clip from her hair to jimmy open the ones on her ankles. 

“Oh, come on, you just did that to show off,” Diego grumbled, once more attempting to break his zip ties. This time, it worked. 

“Can you help me?” Klaus said, holding his wrists out to Allison and batting his eyelashes. “Pretty please?” 

She rolled her eyes and helped him with his zip ties while Luther broke the ones around Diego’s ankles. 

Diego yelped. “That hurt!” 

“Sorry, but come on, it’s not that bad. We’ve wasted enough time. In a real scenario, we’d have to be doing this a whole lot quicker, and quietly.” 

The thing was still probing at the ties around his wrists. He stared, wide-eyed and frozen, as the bones of his hand began to move. The sensation was not so much pain as a queasy wrongness that was somehow worse than if it had just hurt. It was pushing his thumbs into his palms. He slipped out of the wrist ties and watched his hands rearranging, dull horror and fascination churning in his stomach. 

“How’d you do that?” Allison said, when she turned to help him. 

“I guess they were loose,” he said. “Can I borrow your clip?” 

He undid his own ankle restraints and handed her clip back to her. 

“Great. We’ve really demonstrated our world-saving potential here,” Klaus said. "I think we're ready for the big one, guys."

“It’s about being able to work together under pressure,” Luther said. “Dad knows what he’s doing.” 

“Why are you so sure?” 

They were all quiet. Even the air seemed to hold very still. Luther stared at Klaus, and Ben hunched his shoulders and cast his eyes downwards as though that look of disappointment were leveled at him. He would just die if Luther looked at him like that. He knew he would. There was never doubt in Luther’s face. He possessed a rare steadfast certainty, as though at the center of his being there was a stone pillar on which all his convictions were carved, inches deep and impregnable. Luther would not bend, would not cut corners or compromise, not on his principles. Luther was bedrock. There was something almost irresistibly magnetic about him, something which compelled Ben and, he suspected, his siblings as well, to follow his lead, to look to him for guidance, much as they might deny or reject their doing so. Ben had none of that certainty—inside he was all in turmoil, in a terrible state of confusion. He blew one way and another, bending to the influence of his environment. Luther knew who he was. Without a doubt. That was exhilarating. If you didn’t know yourself, you could know Luther—and he claimed to know you, too. That was why his judgement was so awful. It did not condemn. It said: I know you, and you are better than this. You've let yourself down as much as you have me.

That was what Ben could never, ever bear to see on One's face.

“I know because I’ve always known it,” Luther said. “Because it’s been true from the very start. There’s a reason we’re all here, Klaus, and you can try to deny it, or run from it, but it’s not going to change. I think deep down you know it, the same as I do.” 

Klaus scoffed, his face red. At first Ben thought he was ashamed, as he would have been. Then Klaus spoke, and he knew it was anger. “I don’t know jackshit. Don’t tell me what I know. All I know is that you’ve swallowed a lie and that’s one thing, but I can’t stand how _grateful_ you are for it.” 

“That’s what you can’t stand? Gratitude? Everything Dad has done, he’s done for us. For you.” 

“Not for me,” Klaus snarled. 

“Yes, for you. Whether you want to believe that or not, doesn’t make it less true.” 

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you. Look. I don’t get why Dad is so obsessed with the end of the world, but there’s at least one thing I can agree with him on—it's headed this way, probably sooner rather than later.” 

“Then you understand why we have to—” 

“Nuh-uh. No way. That’s where I get off the crazy train. If Dad wanted to ‘save the world,’ don’t you think maybe there were more straightforward ways to go about that than buying us? I mean, what the hell does he want us to be—really, superheroes?” Klaus laughed. It was a bitter, harsh sound. “God, that’s really what you think this is, isn’t it? You really think that’s what we are. That’s too good.” 

“You’re afraid of responsibility. That’s why you can’t stand the idea that Dad is right, and we have to do our part for the world.” 

“Whatever. I’m afraid of responsibility? That’s better than you. At least I have thoughts of my own. You just think whatever Dad tells you to think.” 

“That isn’t true.” 

“No? Then why do you believe all this crap about ‘our responsibility’ to the world? All this training, like we’re people second, and, and tools first, just because we were born like this. In some big cosmic screw up.” 

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Luther said.

Klaus sneered. “God, you’re really his son, you know that?” 

“Unlike you, I don’t see that as an insult.” 

“Just as self-righteous, patronizing, self-important—” 

“And what about you? You’d rather just do nothing important with your life at all? You’d rather be miserable and think the worst of everyone?” 

“Guys,” Ben mumbled. “Come on...” 

“Better that than Dad’s little lackey. Better anything than that.” 

“You’re wasting yourself. And it doesn’t just affect you. You know that, right? Your actions affect all of us.” 

They all knew what Luther was talking about without him having to say it. 

Mom hid the cough syrup, but it hadn’t stopped Klaus from finding ways to dull his powers. 

Klaus' face remained a grinning mask. He was getting better at hiding his real face every day. “Sorry we can’t all be Dad’s perfect poster boy. But really, Luther, admit it—you can act like it’s such a shame we aren’t all ‘living up to our potential’ or whatever the hell, but really, you’re glad. You wouldn’t be able to stand it if you weren’t first in everything. You don’t care what I do, all you care about is whether you look like the good guy in the end.” 

“Please don’t fight,” Ben pleaded, twisting his fingers together, the thing curling around his organs. “This isn’t—you guys don’t mean it, come on.” 

“Ben, just shut up, okay?” Klaus said. 

“Don’t yell at him,” Luther said at once, sounding scandalized. “What’s happened to you? You weren’t always so—we’re supposed to be a team, you know.” 

“I’m not yelling—he doesn’t need you to baby him, you know. You all do it. He’s not a little kid. None of us are, we never got to be,” Klaus said, laughing. “You know what happened. You know. You just don’t want to admit it. None of you do.” 

Nobody ever mentioned the mausoleum anymore. Just like no one ever brought up the rabbits. Or so many other things.

Klaus had talked about it to him, several years ago. Not in any detail. Just enough to make Ben’s whole body go cold and his stomach churn with guilt and hurt for his brother. And he knew then that this was something he would never be able to fix.

“You always dwell on the worst parts,” Allison said, her voice low and quiet. “It’s like you want to be miserable.” 

“So what? I should just get over it, that’s what you’re saying? Toughen up, like the rest of you?” 

“I don’t know, Klaus, maybe. What’s the alternative? What do you want?” 

“I want—you know what I want? I just want you guys to admit it. I want you all to say you know shit's messed up and we’re not going to be heroes and we aren’t going to save the world and buying us has always just been some kind of fucked up experiment or a power trip for Dad this whole time.” 

Luther shook his head. “You’re wrong about Dad, Klaus.” 

“You guys don’t have to agree with him,” Klaus said, looking around at the rest of them. “Come on.” 

“I’m sorry you’re so unhappy here, Klaus. Really, I am. But did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, if you’re the only one who’s so miserable, maybe the problem isn’t Dad, or us, or this place,” said Allison. "Maybe it's you."

Klaus flinched. It was barely perceptible, but it was there. “It’s not just me—you're all lying to yourselves. Five, Diego, I know you agree with me. Maybe not on everything—but a lot of it.” 

Five just shook his head. “Don’t drag me into this.” 

“Why the hell not?” 

“Because what does it solve? This isn’t a referendum, it’s a pissing match. Nothing will change.” 

“You think you’re so above it all,” Klaus muttered. 

“Just drop it, Four, would you?” Diego said. “Like, sorry I’m not completely miserable? Is that what you want to hear? ‘Cause I’m not.” 

“That’s _not_ what I—” 

“Look, I just want to finish training, and be done. Enough is enough. Maybe the world does need us. And if Dad’s preparing us for that, then...it doesn’t really matter if we like it or not. He’s making us stronger.” 

“Dad’s not making us stronger, he’s fucking us up. Ben agrees with me. Tell them, Ben.” 

Ben, who had been doing his best to develop the power to phase through walls so he could sink through the floor and away from this nightmare, startled and looked at Klaus. Klaus who was looking at him with grim determination. Then he looked at the rest of them. At Luther, who gave the faintest shake of his head. 

“I...I think that, um...” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “I understand why you’re upset, but I also get what everyone else has said.” 

“That’s not an answer,” Klaus snapped. “I know you have your own opinion, don’t pretend like you don’t.” 

“I...I just don’t think we should fight. We’re all on the same side, we’re a team. We’re family.” 

Klaus’ face shut down. Ben watched his brother close up and it was every bit as awful as he imagined Luther’s disapproval would be. It was worse, because it was real, and because he knew, without being able to say exactly what or how, that he had done wrong, and let his brother down.

“That won’t keep you safe, you know,” Klaus said, his tone flat and dull. 

Ben didn’t know what his brother meant at the time, but the words rang with the weight of prophecy, and he remembered them. And then one day he understood. He understood all too well.

“I heard a rumor we all focused on the training exercise,” Allison said.

There was a hazy moment where all the tension diffused slowly from the room as their attention refocused. Afterwards, Ben knew what she'd done--she hadn't made them forget--but he couldn't think much of it. He was focused on the training exercise.

“All right, so what’s next? Everyone look around and see what we have to work with,” Luther said. 

“Well, plenty of broken zip ties,” Klaus said, holding one of them up. 

There was only the door, with a small screen set into it which lit up when Allison waved her hand at it. 

“Greetings, Umbrella Academy,” said a robotic voice. “To unlock this door, you must correctly answer a riddle. Are you ready for the riddle?” 

“God damn it,” Diego groaned. “I hate riddles. What situation are we ever going to be in where answering a riddle is somehow relevant?” 

“What happens if we answer incorrectly?” Allison asked. 

“Then regardless of whether you complete the exercise, one of you will receive the punishment. Who that is will be randomly selected.” 

“That’s bullshit,” Klaus said.

“Is there another way out of the room?” Five asked. 

“I cannot tell you that.” 

“I could try breaking the door down,” said Luther. 

“What if you can’t do it and you break the screen and then we’re stuck?” Allison asked. 

“We’re ready for the riddle,” Five said. 

“Five,” Luther said. “What are you doing?” 

“Moving forward.” 

“You can’t just make that decision for all of us without even talking about it first.” 

“We talk too much. All this talking, and nothing gets done. Whatever it is, I’m sure we can handle it.” 

“Here is the riddle: 

Three gods A, B, and C are called, in no particular order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for _yes_ and _no_ are _da_ and _ja_ , in some order. You do not know which word means which.” 

Klaus laughed. “Hope you guys caught all that. ‘Cause I sure didn’t.” 

“Haven’t I heard something like this, like in a movie or something?” Diego asked. 

Allison and Five were both frowning. “This is an extremely famous riddle,” she said. “He can’t really think none of us have heard of it. I think it was even referenced in one of our lessons. At the very least he must know _you’d_ be able to answer it. What’s the point?” 

“Either he’s insulting us,” said Five, “or he’s studying something other than our knowledge of logic puzzles or our powers of deduction.” 

“But you know the answer?” Luther asked. 

Five nodded. “There are a few ways to go about solving it. We could take a straightforward approach.” 

“Or?” said Allison. 

“Or, we could study him back.” 

“What's that mean?” asked Klaus. 

“I’m curious how he’s programmed them to respond to a paradox.” 

“No,” Luther said. “What if it doesn’t work, and you waste our questions and we can’t get the door open? It’s not worth the risk.” 

“There are bigger things to concern ourselves with than the outcome of a single training exercise.” 

“Yeah, well, you play mind games with Dad on your own time, okay? Not when the rest of us might get punished,” said Diego. 

“What do you think the punishment even is?” asked Klaus. 

“Probably more of this,” Allison said glumly. 

Punishments usually consisted of lost privileges; no talking at the table, no allowance, no permission to go and do something for fun outside the house. A loss of their limited personal time, more homework, longer classes, more training. It was always presented as being for their own good. Whatever they had done to earn a punishment, Hargreeves would correct. The older they got, the more the actual punishment was the reminder of his control over how they spent their time. How little say they had at all in what they did with themselves. But that was just the way things were. The way they had always been. 

Vanya was always exempt from these punishments. This did nothing to foster a sense of solidarity between them. It made some of them impatient with her, sometimes even resentful. It made Ben feel sorry for her. He thought she’d rather be punished with the rest of them than go unpunished and alone. 

“I’m going to do it,” Five said, staring at the screen, which now showed three crude, pixelated images. Those were the gods, Ben guessed. There was something eerie about the pictures. They looked like they’d been torn out of an old point and click adventure game. Though the images were simplistic, they looked stern and sad and ragged. Like they'd been stuck inside the screen a long time.

“A—would you answer ja to the question of whether you would answer da to this question?” said Five.

“What?” Diego said. “What kind of question is that!” 

“One only Random can answer. If he can’t answer, then he’s True or False.” 

A floating text box appeared over the god’s head. It hovered over the pixelated image, bouncing up and down a couple times. No words appeared. The god grimaced. And then its head exploded. 

“Jesus Christ,” Diego swore. “What?” 

“Oh my god,” Allison said. 

The image, despite being composed of rudimentary black and white pixels, was still somehow chilling. The remaining two gods remained idling on the screen, beside the body of their compatriot, whose head was now a starburst of exploded matter. 

“So we can kill the gods,” said Five. "Interesting. Now let’s see if we can enslave one by exploiting their logical infallibility.” 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Klaus said. 

“Human beings are logically fallible. It’s a flaw that comes with some select benefits. We can endure paradox. We enjoy them even, they amuse us. A logically infallible god, on the other hand...can't abide paradox. I wonder if that makes us monstrous in their eyes? That we amuse ourselves with something lethal to them. Theoretically, of course. I would think it would make us seem like very strange creatures. Alien. Beyond their comprehension. Horrifying, even. It’s interesting to consider.” 

“Just solve the riddle, Five,” said Luther. 

“Logical infallibility is a pretty disturbing weakness, if you think about it. What if the gods were physical and real, here in the room, and Allison heard a rumor that True told a lie?” 

“Yeah, that’s really interesting,” Klaus said, rolling his eyes. “We get it, you’re profound. Can you please solve the damn thing now? I’d rather not spend all day in here.” 

Five sighed. He got the door open. 

They progressed down the obstacle course of the hallway, which required feats of strength, agility, and knowledge which quickly made Ben realize that had certain members of their team left the rest behind, it would have been nigh impossible for them to get out. He felt that he himself was, especially, little more than dead weight. He wondered if they resented him for it. If they did, none of them said so. There was some light ribbing if Five or Klaus needed help, and Allison and Diego taunted each other, but no one said anything to him. 

Maybe they were all just used to having to pick up his slack. 

But they did not leave anyone behind, and in less than an hour they made it to the door at the end of the hall. It was identical to the last door, complete with another screen. 

“Congratulations, Umbrella Academy,” said the same robotic voice as before. “You’ve nearly successfully completed today’s exercise. All that’s left is to respond to a series of four scenarios. Your answers must be unanimous. You will each be required to scan your fingerprints to provide your consent in confirming your chosen responses. Are you ready to begin?” 

Luther glanced around at each of them, then said, “Yes.” 

“Scenario one: You are the captain of a sinking ship. Aboard your single lifeboat built for seven, there are twenty survivors. It is clear to you that the lifeboat will not last above its capacity, and certainly won’t remain sound during the approaching storm. You must make a decision—do nothing, or cast some of the survivors into the water to drown.” 

“So sacrifice a few for the sake of the many, basically,” Allison said. 

“This is just the stupid trolley problem all over again, isn’t it?” Klaus complained. 

“I mean, if you don’t make some people get out of the boat, they’ll all drown anyway,” Diego said. “And then it’s sort of still your fault, even if you do nothing, ‘cause you could have at least saved some of them.” 

“But what if you’re wrong, and the boat could stay afloat?” said Ben. 

“The scenario says it won’t, though,” Diego said. “And you have to choose based on what you know at the moment.” 

“How’s the captain going to just make some people go overboard anyway?” said Klaus. “Like it’s one thing to say it’s better for some people to live than none, but it’s another to like, actually throw people overboard to die.” 

“I wouldn’t be able to do that,” Ben said, flushing. 

"Well, yeah, I mean, I'm not saying I'd be able to actually _do it,_ no sweat," Diego said.

“Let’s not get too emotionally invested here,” said Five. “It’s just an exercise. None of us can really say how we’d behave if it were real—we can only try to apply some sort of moral theory and come to an agreement.” 

“That’s the important thing,” said Luther. “We have to all agree. It said we have to be unanimous.” 

“Based on a purely utilitarian point of view, it’s obvious what choice you have to make,” Five said. 

“So we force some people out of the boat to save the rest. Does everyone agree?” Luther said. 

“I mean, for the sake of finishing the exercise? I guess,” said Allison. 

Ben pressed his fingerprint to the sensor below the screen with the rest of them. It was only a fake scenario. It didn’t really mean anything. It didn’t matter that if it were real, he was certain he’d never have the stomach for doing such a thing.

He was pretty sure the others wouldn’t, either. But not entirely. 

“Scenario two. Your partner is dying from a rare disease. Luckily a cure has recently been invented, by one druggist who lives fairly close to you. This druggist is selling the cure for ten times the amount it cost him to make it. You try to raise the money, but even borrowing from friends and taking a loan from the bank, you can only raise half the amount. You go to the druggist and offer to pay him half now and half later, but he refuses, saying that he invented the cure and is determined to make money off it. You beg him to sell it cheaper as your partner will die before you can raise the full amount, but he still refuses. 

You believe you could break into his store one night after he has gone home and steal the cure. This would definitely save your partner, although you might be arrested for the crime. What should you do? What if the only way to get the cure is to kill the druggist?” 

“Fuck that guy,” Klaus said immediately. “Steal it. He’s already a murderer for not making the cure available.” 

“What he’s doing is wrong, but that doesn’t give anyone a free pass to just steal from him, let alone kill him,” Allison said. “Imagine if everyone acted like that all the time. The world just wouldn’t work. And the problem is a lot bigger than just your partner—lots of people won’t be able to afford the cure. Are you helping them? Or are you maybe even going to make things worse for them?” 

“You’d just let somebody die all because some pharmaceutical scuzzbucket got greedy?” Klaus demanded. 

“No. I’d steal it. In a heartbeat. But the question didn’t ask what would I do, it asked me what I should do. And I guess without the bigger picture, that’s sort of harder to answer.” 

“If we’re going with the utilitarian theory, you shouldn’t steal,” said Five. “Because if it comes to killing the druggist, the potential loss to the world is probably greater than the loss of your partner, since he’s invented and is distributing a cure. Unless, of course, killing him somehow leads to the cure becoming more widely available, in which case, killing him is going to save more lives than it takes.” 

“Maybe you shouldn’t steal,” Luther said. “But...it’s what I’d want to do, too.” 

“Yeah,” said Diego. “I honestly don’t know what the right answer is, I just know if somebody’s gonna die, for no other reason than somebody else wants to be an evil piece of shit, then I can justify stealing pretty damn easily.” 

“I don’t think you should do it if you have to kill him,” said Ben. “But otherwise I think you should.” 

“But it wants us to take that into consideration as a possibility,” said Allison. “Which implies there’s some kind of greater value judgement going on here, some kind of general moral reasoning we should be able to apply to reach the same conclusion across different scenarios.”

Sometimes she sounded strangely similar to Five. He wondered how much like Five's mind Allison's worked, and how she'd developed the ability to disguise and adapt how she presented herself, so much more so than Five had.

“Can we just agree to steal and move on to the next one?” Klaus said. “These things really annoy me. I can’t really say why, I just hate getting so like, sort of abstract about shit I think you should just do and feel in the moment.” 

“The point is to consider things ahead of time, so you can act with greater moral clarity in the moment,” said Five. 

“Does that really work though? ‘Cause it’s like, I don’t think it actually says that much about you, what answers you give to these things.” 

“I think it could potentially say quite a lot,” Five said. "Just maybe not anything obvious."

“So we’re stealing?” Diego said. “Let’s keep this moving.” 

They input their responses, and the machine spoke again. 

“Scenario three. You are a skilled doctor, with five patients who all need different organ transplants. There are currently no organs available to give them, and if they don’t get their transplants soon they will all die. You have a sixth patient, who is dying of an incurable disease. At the moment you are giving him medicine to ease his pain and prolong his life. He is a compatible organ donor for your five other patients, but the medicine he is taking will keep him alive just a day longer than they have left. If you were to stop giving him medicine he would die before them, in a very painful way, but you would then be able to use his organs to save the other five. What should you do?” 

“It’s the same damn question,” Allison said. “Do something bad to somebody or let the same thing happen to more people.” 

“So can we just answer the same and move on?” Diego said. “There’s only one more.” 

“We should at least think about it,” Luther said. 

“I don’t want to. I hate these things,” Klaus said. “There’s something so—so sort of smug about handing down these situations and acting like you get to pass some sort of judgement on people for how they answer, when there’s no good answer and you know it, but you’re asking anyway. It feels, I don’t know, like really mean-spirited, like whoever made these up hates us. I don’t want to answer at all.” 

“I couldn’t do that,” Ben said, unable to hold his reaction in any longer. His voice came out more emotional than he’d meant it to, but there was nothing he could do about that now. “I don’t know what’s right or not—I guess it’s right to save more people? But I couldn’t, I wouldn’t be able to.” 

“Are you sure you couldn’t? Or does the idea upset you so much because you’re afraid that maybe you could, and you don’t like what that says about yourself?” Five asked. 

Ben stared at him, aghast. “Wh...what?” 

“I’m just curious. It just seems like you’re all having an emotional response to what's only a hypothetical, and you almost sound defensive.” 

“I think it’s normal to react, when you’re asked to empathize with such a horrible situation—don't you think so?” Luther said, sounding almost concerned. 

“Well, I don’t,” Allison declared. “Look, it’s just an exercise. We’re all tired and irritated and we’re taking it too personally. We’re almost through.” 

“These have all been asking us to choose between what’s right and what’s good,” Five said. “Obviously, it’s wrong to kill someone, and right to give the man his medicine. But it’s good to save five other people, and bad to let them die.” 

“I think it’s different if you’re a doctor,” Diego said. “I don’t think a doctor’s job is to like, pick and choose who lives like that. That's messed up.” 

“Yeah, you have like, bodily autonomy,” said Klaus. “Just because he’s dying doesn’t give anyone the right to decide to harvest his organs. Jesus, guys, come on.” 

“Okay, well, when you put it like that...” Allison said. 

“So we’re voting no, don’t save the five people? Isn’t that, like, inconsistent with what we voted for number one?” said Diego. 

“Does it matter?” Luther asked. “I think the important thing is that we all communicate and manage to make a decision together.” 

“What if...” Diego cut himself off. That wasn’t like him. 

“What?” Ben asked. 

“What if they aren’t just scenarios though? What if—what if Dad’s put this in the training ‘cause he thinks we’re really going to have to make some kind of choice like that?” 

They all looked around at each other, waiting to see who would dare to speak up. 

“These are just made-up scenarios,” Allison said. “Real life isn’t like this. It’s just to get you thinking.” 

“Maybe we won’t be in these exact situations,” Luther said, “but I think he could be trying to prepare us to make tough decisions.” 

“With great power comes great responsibility,” Klaus said, making his voice deep. He laughed. “That’s what you sound like.” 

“I’m serious,” Luther said. “Maybe it’s a joke or a cliché to you, but I think it’s true.” 

They input their responses, all of them uneasy and ready to be done. The final scenario appeared. 

“Scenario four. There are seven children. Six of them are given a task to complete, while the seventh is left to do as they please. If they do not complete the task, they will be punished, and the seventh child rewarded; or, they can finish their task as they were instructed, and earn a reward, and the seventh child will receive the punishment. What should they do?” 

They were all quiet for a moment. Ben looked around. They all looked grave. He was confused. It couldn’t be what he was thinking. “Is...is this about us?” 

“Yes, Six,” Allison said. “Obviously it’s about us.” 

“Hold on a second,” Diego said. “It’s not really about us—you just said these are made-up fake scenarios.” 

Five had the little crease between his brows he got when he was thinking hard on something. “I don’t know what he’s trying to learn from this. I don’t know what this demonstrates.” 

“This is bullshit,” Klaus said. “This is so, so stupid.” 

“So it’s saying we can—we can complete the exercise, and get the reward, like he said in the beginning, but if we do, now Seven’s going to get punished?” said Ben. 

“We don’t know that,” Luther said. “Why would Dad do that? It’s just a scenario.” 

“Don’t be dense,” Allison said. “He’s obviously trying to make some kind of point. I guess you were right—he wants us to know it’s not just an exercise. Our choices have consequences.” 

“I don’t know,” Five said. “It’s like there’s something else there, I just don’t...” 

“I think it’s a test,” Diego said. “Like he’s trying to see if we trip up when we’re right about to win. Let’s just choose an option and be done.” 

“But what if it’s not just hypothetical and we’re really making a choice?” Ben said. 

“Who cares? I’m not spending all day in here and I’m not getting punished for no reason. Seven has way more free time than the rest of us. She’s been doing whatever she wants all day. Let her get extra homework or early curfew or whatever the hell it is," said Allison.

“But Seven didn’t do anything,” Ben said. “It doesn’t seem fair.” 

“Yeah, but neither did we,” said Klaus. 

“What if we all vote no, they shouldn’t complete the task? If we all agree, then we finish the last scenario, and we finish the exercise. Maybe the two will cancel out,” Diego said. 

“I don’t think we can count on that reasoning,” said Five. 

“I don’t want to risk it,” said Allison. There was distress in her tone she was doing her best to cover up, to act like this didn’t affect her, but Ben could tell she was upset. “Besides, this isn’t like the other scenarios—it's obviously right to vote that we should complete the task, because Dad told us to, it’s what we’re supposed to be doing. It’s not like we want Seven to get punished, but it’s not us doing that. It's not our fault.” 

“It is if we vote that way,” Luther said. 

“Whose side are you on?” Allison said. 

“I’m not on any side—I want to finish the exercise, just like you. I just think we should take responsibility for whatever we choose to do. I think that’s what we’re supposed to learn.” 

“There are other ways for us to learn that than this crap,” Klaus said. 

“Well, Dad knows what he’s doing,” Luther said. “I don’t think Seven will actually get punished. What would be the point? But if Dad does, then he must have his reasons, and we just don’t understand them yet. I think the important thing is that we just work together and finish this, one way or another, and own up to whatever choices we make.” 

“That’s not fair,” Klaus said. “If Dad punishes Seven, that’s not our fault, and I’m not gonna take responsibility or whatever for something I didn’t do. He put us in this situation. It’s only _his_ fault.” 

“You can’t blame other people for whatever goes wrong forever, Klaus,” said Luther. 

“This isn’t me just passing the buck, this is just literally _not_ our fault. I know you’ve got some like, weird obsession with taking responsibility for everything, even stuff that’s really none of your business at all, but I don’t, and I’m not going to let Dad make me feel guilty for what he’s doing. We’re not making him punish Seven, he’s doing that all on his own.” 

“We still don’t know if that’s true,” Diego said. “I don’t think—I mean, he wouldn’t, right? What’s the point?” 

“Can we please just make a decision?” Five demanded. “Some of us have more important things to be doing.” 

“Oh yeah, because the rest of us don’t, right?” Allison said. 

“I don’t have time for this.” 

“I like Diego’s idea,” said Ben. “If all of us vote no, we shouldn’t complete the task, then we still finish the exercise, right?” 

“What do you guys think the reward is?” Diego asked. “Do you think we’ll still get it, if we vote no?” 

“It was your idea, and now you’re worried about the reward?” Allison scoffed. 

Diego flushed. “Look, I’m just wondering, okay?” 

“What if we just tossed a coin?” Klaus said. 

“That defeats the entire purpose,” Luther said. 

“No it doesn’t. Look, everything’s random, nothing really means anything unless you decide it does, so if we all _decide_ to flip a coin, then that’s the point. Get it? See, I can do philosophy too.” 

“I’d feel too guilty if we voted wrong and Seven got punished,” Ben said. “I’m not voting for that.” 

“Avoiding guilt is a really poor way to make your choices, Six,” Allison said. “It’s not realistic and it doesn’t mean you’re better than me just because I don’t see why we should all risk getting punished. Like, will I feel bad if she does? Yeah, probably, but I’m not going to let that control me.” 

“I didn’t say I thought I was better than you, I just...” 

“Like, we get it, you’re too good to ever do something mean like that, but don’t try and make _me_ feel guilty because I don’t feel the need to show everybody how nice I am all the time.” 

“I’m not—I’m not trying to do anything,” he said. “I’m sorry.” 

“Of course you are,” she said, rolling her eyes. 

“Quit picking on him, would you?” Luther said. “Listen, let’s just finish this. I don’t like it either, but I think we all know what the right choice is. Dad told us to complete the exercise. Those are our instructions. It’s important. We’re training. We’re going to save people. How can we choose otherwise? Choices have consequences and we have to learn to accept them. If it is some kind of test, we’ll pass by proving that we understand our mission has to be put first, above everything else.” 

“Fine,” Diego snapped. “But I don’t like it.” 

“Ben?” Luther said, looking at him expectantly. 

Ben couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “Please don’t make me,” he mumbled. “What if she does get in trouble, and Dad tells her what we did and she knows it’s all our fault?” 

“You don’t even care if she gets in trouble,” Allison said. “You just don’t want her to be pissed at you again.” 

“That’s not true.”

“You literally just admitted it.” 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, flushing. 

“What about us? Do you care if we get in trouble when we didn’t do anything wrong either? Why is it better for us to get in trouble? You care more about her than all of us, is that it?” 

“No! Okay, okay, fine! I’ll do it.” 

For a second, he thought he saw disappointment on Five’s face. But when it came time to cast their votes, Five went along with the rest of them, his impatience winning out over his sympathy. 

Vanya wasn’t punished and they never talked about what they'd done, but sometimes he remembered it, and felt something close to dread, as though this small instance of disloyalty were only a harbinger clearing the way for some greater betrayal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...And that's a wrap for now. Hate this chapter? Have thoughts on their responses to these dilemmas, or your own reflections? Feel free to yell at me about it. I had fun looking up [examples of moral dilemmas](https://www.friesian.com/valley/dilemmas.htm) for this chapter and reading them aloud to my roommates (which helped me get some...interesting responses, some of which I worked in here, some of which were seriously...out there. You really think you know somebody until they suddenly become the 19th century captain of a sinking lifeboat and suddenly it's every man for himself.) I also had fun reading about [the concept of what a moral dilemma even is (or if it is?).](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-dilemmas/) I thought I knew...but I did not.
> 
> Honestly, I'm with Klaus on this one--I often find dilemmas are handed down in a way that seems sanctimonious, when really they should be useful tools for talking about values and moral theory...alas.
> 
> I definitely am not mathematically intelligent enough to solve logic puzzles, but it sure was fun to read about all the ways Five could break ["The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever."](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hardest_Logic_Puzzle_Ever) The exploding-heads and controlling the gods thing are actual situations people smarter than me have deduced as possibilities for this puzzle, if you're taking the scenario seriously.
> 
> Thanks for reading! :)


	9. Promises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luther tries his hand at a promising career as a life coach. Allison has a proposition. Ben creates problems for himself and everyone around him ~~but it's okay we still love him.~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello! First of all, thank you guys so much for your wonderful response to the last chapter. I wasn't sure if people would like it, but I knew I wanted to write at least one chapter involving puzzles and lots of characters confined in a space. It was a bit of a stressful chapter...um...not sure if this one is? Less stressful? But if it is, at least it's stressful in new ways? Yeah.
> 
> The kids are getting older...they grow up so fast. :,)
> 
> Also, in case anyone cares, I'm just going to link to my little [character playlists](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5mYYj9J7ZVfQdoq2SvN80C?si=AjT7KEGpS1-urvlrrxCM1A) on spotify, numbered for your convenience, just like these children...just some songs I listen to for getting into the headspace/general vibe for writing, although they apply to later parts of the young adult story, not so much now in awkward teenager land. Also, you guys who comment on the books in these chapters and recommend me things--I love you and I love your recs.
> 
> Anyway, as always, thanks for reading and hope you enjoy the chapter! Feel free to yell at me...

Today was their birthday. Today they were sixteen years old. The cakes sat cooling on their stands--one chocolate and one vanilla. The kitchen was warmed by the heat of the oven. Mom hummed as she stirred blue food coloring into a bowl of buttercream frosting. The discarded tops of the cakes sat on a sheet of parchment paper on the counter. 

“They’re cool. Now can I?” 

Mom smiled. Her smile was perfectly white and straight. It was made to be that way. “As long as it’s not too hot.” 

Ben tore off a piece of chocolate cake and stuffed it in his mouth. The Horror braided itself beneath his skin, rumbling against his bones with a sound too low to hear, a sound which had to be felt. He could not help the contentment that vibration sent flooding through his body, like an internal massage. They were safe. They were happy. They were glad no one else could hear or feel the sound below sound; it was theirs. 

“Mom, can I ask you something?” 

“Anything, sweetheart.” 

“Do you...ever get lonely?” 

Her smile did not change. “Lonely? How could I ever be lonely, with all of you children here with me?” 

“Well—well, you can be lonely with other people around, can’t you?” 

Did he imagine that her smile was softer? 

It would be nice if it was, wouldn’t it? If she had that ability? If she had that feeling, even, never mind the ability to express it? 

She ruffled his hair and said, “Little Number Six,” she said, voice low and quiet, and it tugged something in his chest, the old pet name, from before she’d named them. “You were always thinking. I worried, you know. That growing up, you’d be sad. You were always so happy...but when you were sad, you’d get so sad I’d think, where did he go?” 

“I’m not sad, Mom,” he said, looking up at her, ignoring the crack in his voice. “I’m doing really good.” 

She stroked his hair, smoothing it down. “It’s okay to be sad sometimes,” she whispered. 

Did he need to hear this? He wasn’t a little kid anymore. Didn’t she have something else, something more, something older? 

Or maybe it was exactly what he needed to hear. 

“What about you though? How are you?” 

Her smile was her smile was exactly the smile that had been crafted for her, on purpose. “Me? I’m doing just wonderful, sweetheart. What more could I want?” 

“Mom,” he said. “It’s okay not to be happy.” 

Her laughter was light, like the ringing of small bells. She ruffled his hair once more and stepped away, back to her bowl of frosting. And not for the first time he wondered--how had someone like Dad created someone like Mom? Where did she come from? He must care for them as she did. He showed it differently, that was all. But he must. He must.

“Beater?” she asked, holding out the pair of beaters from the handmixer. His eyes lit up as he took them and made quick work of licking the icing clean. 

Diego came back into the kitchen and headed for the sink, quickly scrubbing his hands. “Okay, I’m back. How can I help?” 

“Oh, you don’t have to help, sweetheart. You can go enjoy your day off.” 

“I _wanna_ help, Mom.” 

“My little helper,” she said, smiling. Diego smiled back. “You can go help your brother.” 

“Help him do what, eat everything in the kitchen?” Diego groused, slouching onto the stool across from Ben. 

“Do you want a—er. Never mind,” he said. He was going to offer one of the beaters, but he’d already eaten all the icing off. “There’s still cake.” 

He slid the parchment of cake scraps closer to Diego. Diego stared down at the pile of crumbs, then back up at Ben, unimpressed. 

“Sorry,” he said, sheepish. 

“Yeah, some help you are,” Diego muttered, but he was grinning, his voice amused and fond. 

Some days were still like that—where he could see a clear bright line between their past and their present, and the imaginary future where everything remained in place. 

“Do you guys ever think about what you’ll do, after?” 

Ben and Klaus looked up from the spread of tarot cards Klaus was intending to divine and looked at Allison. She was lying on the ground in the library nearby, the smell of the purple nail polish drying on her fingers sharp and acrid as she looked down at her magazine, pretending to read, as though she hadn’t spoken. They were the only ones in the library; Luther was off doing one-on-one training, while the others were brooding, which seemed about all they did lately. 

“After what?” Ben asked. 

“You know. This.” 

Ben and Klaus exchanged a glance. Klaus shrugged and said, “Probably get told off for wasting time and not studying like we’re supposed to?” 

“No, no. I mean after the Academy.” 

Ben stared at her, dumbfounded. She finally looked up. 

“What do you mean?” he asked. 

“I mean...do you really think we’ll live here forever? When we’re all adults?” She turned the page in her magazine, speaking with forced nonchalance. “I mean, regular people move out, and start their own lives. They get jobs, or go to college.” 

“But...we’re not regular people,” Ben said, thinking this really was so obvious it shouldn’t need mentioning. 

“I know that. But still, are we going to do this forever? Wear these dumb uniforms, live in this house, go on missions and do whatever Dad says? Have a _curfew?_ ” 

Klaus was grinning at her. Ben didn’t like the look at all. Like they both knew something he didn't yet.

“Dad says we have to be ready, whenever the world is going to need us...” Ben said. 

“Do you really believe that?” she said, staring at him. 

He squirmed. Her gaze was too intense, like she saw right through him. “I...I don’t know what else there is.” 

“I think I want to go to college,” she said. “I think I want...to decide for myself how I’m going to live, and have a career of my own.” 

“You mean you’re going to just leave?” Ben said. 

“Not right now. Just—look, don’t you ever think about getting out? Be honest.” 

He looked down. “I...I hate going on missions,” he mumbled. 

“I know you do. So why not think about what you’d like to do instead?” 

“I want to get an apartment,” Klaus said, beaming. “And decorate it however I want, and wear whatever I want all the time, and meet new people, and—yeah.” 

“Isn’t college just more school?” Ben said. 

“Yeah, but you get to choose what you study, at least most of the time. And there are tons more subjects.” 

“I don’t even really...know what kinds of jobs you can get,” he said, embarrassed all of a sudden. “It’s hard to really imagine...doing something else.” 

“Yeah, I know. But it can be exciting, too.” 

“But what would Dad think?” Ben said. “He’d be so...and we can’t just leave...” 

“Look. If the world starts ending or whatever, and Dad is right and somehow we’re like, the best chance of saving it, fine. We can come back. But...but I don’t know when that’s going to happen, or even if it is, and in the meantime, I want to live. I want to find out what I want to do with my life. The world...doesn’t really need us, I don’t think. At least, it doesn’t need us as we are right now. And even if it does...I haven’t got a hero complex like—you know. Maybe it’s selfish, but I want to live in my own way, and I can find other ways to help people. Maybe better ways.” 

They were all quiet for a moment, and then she added, “Don’t repeat any of this stuff to anybody else, okay? Not yet.” 

“We won’t,” said Ben. 

“But you’ll think about it?” 

“I’m already on board,” Klaus said. “I don’t know how much more I can take.” 

“Me neither,” Ben mumbled. “Sometimes I get worried that—that if this goes on, somebody’s really going to get hurt one day. I don’t think I could live with myself if that happened.” 

Over the couple dozen missions they’d gone on in the past, he had felt Their anger growing, until it was like a third creature all its own. He couldn’t fit much more of it, he had no where else to put it, to box it away in the bottom of his heart where it couldn’t get out and destroy everything like it wanted to. 

There had been close calls. There was the time Klaus had been punched in the head and went down like a sack of bricks. Luther had taken bullets a few times. They’d all broken bones, been bruised and bloodied. Diego and Luther had both sent people to the hospital, and so had Ben. He could remember how it felt when They yanked someone’s arm back too far, until it tore in its socket, and he knew how horrifyingly easily it would come off, if They just kept pulling. He knew what it felt like when someone’s ribs cracked with Them wrapped around their torso, had nearly watched someone suffocate because They were coiled around their neck, and it was only a matter of time, he knew that, he felt it in his bones—They were going to hurt someone in a way they couldn't take back. With every mission, every time he was forced to use Them as a tool or a weapon, every time They were cut or shocked or burned or beaten, Their anger grew and They learned to expect violence out in the world beyond his skin. 

“Then let’s not let it happen,” Allison said. 

As if it was really going to be that easy. Then again, maybe it was. 

He wanted to believe her, so he did.

The older they grew, the more it seemed they were all becoming people except for him. When they were very young, they spent so much time together, and had so few other influences, that it was easy to feel as though they were seven parts of a whole. Their minds had been familiar to him; he had known their thoughts. Now there was no pretending. 

They were seeking ways to differentiate themselves with desperate intensity, but Six did not want to be separate. He did not want to be different. 

The others used to joke that he and Vanya could have swapped outfits and no one would have noticed. They both favored loose, baggy clothes, neutral colors; oversized jeans and flannels, t-shirts and jackets, clothes you could hide inside. But they were sixteen now and Vanya had cut her hair short and spiky, and while she still eschewed conventional fashion with a vehemence that felt personal, especially alongside Allison’s careful accessorizing, she was getting more daring ever since her and Diego had gotten it into their heads to start a band. To most people, the changes might not have been drastic, but to him, any change was a big change, and the black jacket and the boots and the ripped jeans all belonged to somebody else. Maybe it was just a phase? He used to copy them all sometimes, trying to keep up, but it was like watching them all turn into different people, while he was desperately trying to stay the same. 

Luther was the only one he could count on not to suddenly decide he was a different person. Luther was still bedrock, still steady enough to keep time by. 

And yet, sometimes it was Luther who made Ben feel like he wanted to change, too, just like the rest of them. 

“You still hold back,” Luther said. 

The others had already left the training room. They hadn’t been able to get out of there fast enough once Hargreeves dismissed them. Ben had sat on the bench drinking his water and catching his breath until it was only him and Luther, who was lingering nearby, his short sandy hair standing up in sweat-slicked spikes. 

Ben blinked at him, trying to focus. His heart rate was taking a long time to settle down, the thing churning away inside him, agitated by the exercise and expecting a fight, anticipating pain and the crack of bone within its grasp. “Sorry, what?” 

“You still hold back. Just like when we were kids.” 

The Horror was roiling in his stomach, making him sick. He had the awful image of it teething on his organs. Guzzling all that water had been a mistake. The adrenaline high was taking longer and longer to fade every time they got worked up, the panicky itch to run or fight lingering on and making him edgy all day. It was waiting for him to let it out, to get hurt again, to tear something apart. He didn't know how to soothe Them anymore.

The idea sickened him. But sometimes, he wondered what would happen if he just gave up. Let it control him instead of always fighting to subdue it. It would be so much easier. So easy. 

He was turning into a bad person. 

“Why?” Luther asked. 

“I don’t know. I don’t...I don’t feel like I’m holding back. Maybe I’m just weaker than you think I am.” 

Luther shook his head, absolute certainty in his face, and Ben both loved him and hated him for that. “Nah, don’t say that. See—maybe that’s your problem.” 

Ben grit his teeth, his nails digging crescents into his palms. Control. He needed control. He wasn’t going to lash out at Luther just because the thing was antsy and scared and furious and _hungry._

God, but something really was going wrong with him. 

Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he’d always been all wrong inside. 

“What’s my problem?” 

“You’re always selling yourself short. Why do you do that?” 

Ben looked away, eyes darting around the room for something to settle on. “I don’t know...I’m just being realistic. I’m not like you. I’m not—you know.” 

“What?” 

Ben looked up at his brother. Luther’s face was open and earnest, no trace of a trap or a trick. “Strong. Good. You know. There’s a reason you’re One, and I’m Six.” He tried for a smile, the sort of self-deprecating, easy-going grin that almost always got him off the hook. 

“See? You’re doing it right now!” 

Apparently not this time. 

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? Not that I—I'm not complaining. I know it’s that way for a reason, I don’t want—it's just, that’s how things are.” 

“If you tell yourself you’re going to come in last every time, what do you think’s going to happen?” Ben didn’t answer, so Luther went on. “It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy, isn’t it? You tell yourself, I’m already Number Six, nobody expects me to do any better than that, so why bother trying?” 

“You don’t know what I think.” His voice came out harsher than he’d intended. He winced. “I’m sor—” 

“Wait,” said Luther. “It’s okay. If I’m wrong, tell me. Let me understand.” 

Did Luther have any idea how disarming he could be? How one hint of vulnerability in him had you wanting to spill your guts, as sure as if Allison had rumored you? 

He wondered if his other siblings felt that way, or if it was just him. 

“You must be tired,” Ben said. “Dad had you training longer than the rest of us. We don’t have to talk now.” 

“Do you...not want to talk to me?” 

“What? No, no, of course I do!” 

“Ben,” Luther said, wincing. “Don’t do that, come on. It’s okay, but...is there a reason why? I just—I just feel like nobody really tells me things anymore? And I don’t know if I’ve done something, or if it’s just normal, or if everyone’s just going through some stuff right now—but if they are, shouldn’t they tell me about it? Don’t you all think I could help? Isn’t that what I’m here for?” 

“I don’t think you’ve done anything, or anything like that—I think maybe just...for some of them, it might be easier to tell you stuff, if it didn’t feel like you were kind of...thinking of it as, you know, a job.” 

“By some of them, you mean yourself too, don’t you?” 

Ben shrugged, sheepish. “I...I don’t want to burden you with stuff just because you think you have to listen, ‘cause you’re the leader. I know it must be a lot of pressure.” 

Luther sighed, running a hand through his hair. “But that’s what a leader does. It’s not all just giving orders and making decisions. I’m also supposed to support you guys. How can I do that if you don’t tell me what’s going on with you? How am I supposed to be Number One if nobody trusts me enough to tell me things?” 

“The thing is...sometimes, I want to tell things to you, as my brother, and not as Number One.” 

Luther stared at him. “I don’t get it.” 

“It just...might be nice, if we could talk about stuff sometimes, without it having to always be about...the mission, or training, or being part of a team and all that stuff.” 

“But...why? Isn’t it all related? Part of the same thing, I mean?” 

“I get that it is, for you, and maybe it should be for me, but it’s just not—look, I really do want to talk, but I’m tired, Luther, and I just—” 

“I don’t mean that in the way you think—I mean, I don’t think I do? I just mean—being your brother and being Number One...that’s the same thing to me. I don’t know how to separate that out. If you try and explain, I can try my best—but I don’t understand why I’d divide myself like that. Is that...that’s how you feel? Like you’re almost two different people?” 

“I think I’m more than two different people.” 

They stared at each other for a moment. Ben waited. There was no judgement on Luther’s face, but not any understanding either. 

Okay, so he hadn’t meant to say something so totally strange out loud. He could say things like that to Klaus, or Five, and know that his brother would probably get it, and if not, would roll with it—but as much as he’d always looked up to Luther, and sometimes sought to emulate him, they’d never really made a habit of sharing their personal thoughts with each other. 

“Okay,” Luther said. “Really?” 

“Never mind. It’s not important.” 

“No,” Luther said, entirely too enthused. “This is good. We’re making progress.” 

“Are we though?” 

“Yeah. Maybe that’s why you’re holding back!” 

“It is?” 

“Think about it—if you feel like you’ve got all these different parts of yourself, but you’re only being one of them at a time, how can you ever realize your full potential in the moment?” 

Christ, had he gotten his hands on another motivational speaking pamphlet or something? He felt bad at once for thinking that. But he couldn’t unthink it. 

“Well, it’s not—everyone feels like that, at least sometimes. You have different sides of yourself for different roles, nobody’s ever being their whole self all at once.” 

“I am,” Luther said. And, well. There was that infuriating, intoxicating confidence again. Ben had never been any match for that. “And you can, too. Why don’t you try it?” 

“I don’t know...” 

“Come on, we’re getting somewhere here—tell me. Why not? Why’re you holding yourself back?” 

“I guess I’m just not like you. I can’t do that.” 

“Why? Are you scared?” 

“What?” 

“What are you scared of? What’s the worst that could happen?” 

“I don’t...I don’t know. Probably something terrible.” 

“Not at all. That’s the fear talking. Come on, get up, let’s try something.” 

“Luther...” 

“Really, c’mere.” 

Ben sighed, hauling himself to his feet and slouching after Luther as he jogged across the room and smacked his palm against the battered punching bag hanging from the ceiling by a heavy chain. It rattled and swayed through the air. 

“We just got done with training, now you want me to do more?” 

“This is a different kind of training. Don’t even think of it as training, think of it as—as self-actualization.” 

Luther’s eyes were shining with hope and enthusiasm and Ben really couldn’t let him down now, could he? 

“Go on,” Luther said. 

“You want me to hit it? That’s it?” 

“Hard as you can.” 

Ben sighed and slung his fist at the bag. He looked at Luther, one brow raised in a muted version of one of Five’s most scathing looks. 

“You can do better than that,” Luther said. 

“What does it matter? It’s not like I make a habit out of getting into fist fights.” 

“Knock the bag off the chain.” 

“Are you crazy?” Ben said, staring at the excessively thick chain tethering the bag to the ceiling. It looked like some kind of Medieval torture instrument. That was what it took to keep the bag tethered and prevent the chain from tearing from the wall, if Luther wanted to practice with it. “I can’t do that!” 

“But I want you to hit it like you can, and you mean to.” 

Ben squared up against the punching bag and punched again. He pulled back his fist with a hiss. “It hurts my knuckles.” 

“Good. It’ll strengthen them. Is that why you hold back? You’re afraid of pain? You don’t want to get hurt?” 

“Of course I don’t,” Ben said, grunting as he threw another punch at the bag. It barely swayed. It was heavy and solid and he wondered what it was like, moving through a world where everything was breakable to you, like Luther did. 

He guessed he knew a little something about that—except that unlike Luther, he felt very breakable himself. 

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” he said. “I’m tired of hurting people and getting hurt and seeing you guys get hurt—aren't you?” 

“But you always get back up again. Isn’t that worth something?” 

He hit the bag again, feeling the impact rattle up his arm. “We shouldn’t have to get hurt to prove we’re worth something—and this really hurts. Do I have to hurt myself to prove I’m strong to you? Is that it?” 

The thing was boiling, and it took almost everything he had to keep it from showing. He could not let it give him away. He could not let Luther see how much this was getting to him. Control, he had to have control, or how was anybody ever going to take him seriously and actually listen when he said something?

Luther gave him an appraising look. He looked...pleased. Faintly surprised. “No. Is that how you feel?” 

“Isn’t that how it is?” 

Luther turned, striding to the cubbies along the wall and returning with a pair of gloves. “These are Diego’s. He won’t mind.” 

“Are you sure about that?” Ben mumbled, but he took the gloves anyway and strapped them on. 

“You don’t have to hurt yourself to prove anything,” Luther said. “There’s nothing you need to prove to me. I already know you can do it. You just don’t know it yet.” 

“It’s _physically impossible_ for me to knock this bag off the chain.” 

“With that attitude.”

“Are you...are you making fun of me? Is this a joke or something?” he asked, wilting, suddenly ridiculous. 

“Absolutely not. But if you’re worried all the time about getting laughed at, you’ll never be able to be your whole self at once.” 

Ben slung another punch at the bag. The gloves helped, supporting his wrists and making his hands feel less frail. “Why are you even bothering with this? You don’t need me to be more. I don’t bring anything to the team. I could be anybody, it doesn’t matter who I am or what I can do, as long as I’ve got this horrible... _stupid_ thing under control.” He punctuated his words with another couple punches. He stopped and held still, forcing his breath to be deep and even, beating the thing back from the surface of his skin. 

“Is that really what you think?” Luther said. 

“No. Yes. I don’t know. Is it true?” 

“This isn’t about the Horror,” Luther said. “This is about you. I want you to want more for yourself, to be your whole self. I want you to see what I see in you.” 

Ben hit the bag again, harder, and again. “You don’t get it though. There’s nothing—to see. There’s not anything else, I’m not holding anything back, or keeping anything from you—this is all I’ve got.” 

“Then why are you afraid?” 

“Why aren’t you?” His fist thudded against the bag, which refused to give. It was stubborn and unmoving and didn't care what he felt or had to say, just like everything else.

“Why should I be? I know we can handle anything the world throws at us. If you’re doing good for the world, you don’t have anything to be afraid of.” 

“I wish I was like you. But I just can’t think that way, I, I can't be that sure. Don’t you ever worry, or have doubts? Don’t you wonder if—if we’re really doing all that much good?” 

“I worry about all of you. But I also know we’ll pull through. And I don’t have to wonder, because I know.” 

“How? How can you be so sure about everything?” 

“Maybe if you start being honest, and let go of what’s holding you back, you’ll feel it too.” 

“But I can’t do that,” he said, slugging the bag. “I can’t just—I can’t be like that. I can't just _let go_. You’re good, you don’t have to worry about being good, but I—part of me has to be watching me all of the time, to make sure, I can’t just—it's not as easy as you want to think it is.” 

“You have the Horror under control, Ben. This isn’t about it. It’s about you.” 

“You keep saying that like it means something, but it doesn’t _work_ like that.” 

It wanted out, it wanted out, it wanted out. He wanted to let it out. Its anger and his anger were mingling and mixing in the dizzying way he fought constantly every second to avoid. He was going to slip. The shaky line he’d tried to draw wasn’t any kind of line at all, it was porous, nothing stayed where it should. Luther saw their powers as a gift and an obligation. Being powerful meant protecting the world. But Ben had never felt powerful. His 'power' meant feeling vulnerable and trapped.

“That’s just the fear talking again. Don’t let it control you.” 

And he was afraid, of course he was, all of the time, very, very afraid, but now he was also so, so angry. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. He could hide behind sorry, right? He was just wearing a human face as a mask, just skin stretched on top of something awful, whatever Luther saw was only a lie, an illusion, a trick to keep himself alive, but he could still cower behind sorry for a while longer, couldn’t he? “I’m sorry, I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough, I’m not good enough, I’m not any of the things you think I am, I can’t do better, I can’t make you happy, or proud, and I can’t hit this bag off this _stupid_ chain.” 

His fist hit the bag and a shock reverberated all the way up his arm, raced up and down his body from the crown of his head to his feet and then ricocheted back and forth. The bag did not move, but rattled in place, the chain singing as it vibrated, and all the hair on his body was standing on end and gooseflesh was breaking out on his arms and he tasted something acrid in the air, like a lightning strike, and he heard the hush and rustle of hundreds of insect wings fluttering against themselves in a mockery of speech, and the thing breathed like a cathedral organ in his chest, and for a second he was sure his eyes rolled back and he was looking at the writhing gray mass of twisting shadows inside his skull, and time became soft so that he could take one second in his hands and stretch it out like taffy, forever and ever. 

Ben slammed the door shut and everything stopped. He was standing in the training room with Luther, staring at the punching bag, covered in a sudden cold sweat. He swallowed with difficulty and fumbled to rip the gloves off his shaking hands. 

“I’m sorry. I have to—I didn’t mean to—you're okay, aren’t you?” 

Luther blinked and shook a frightening slack blankness off his face. Ben could see his brother doing his best to hide his shock, because even now Luther wanted to be strong for him, wanted to be the one who had everything together for the sake of someone else, and it was just too much. 

“I’m fine,” Luther said. “I—Ben? What just...” 

“I’m so, so sorry. I promise it won’t—I’ve got it under control. Thank you, Luther, thank you for trying to help me. I'm sorry. I’ve got to go.” 

“Maybe we can try again, another time, when you’re...feeling up to it.” 

“Yeah, let’s, let’s do that,” Ben said, before letting the gloves drop to the floor and bolting out of the room, leaving his brother standing there, dazed and sickened. 

And this? This was why he kept some parts of himself reserved. This was why he had certain boundaries, but nobody seemed to really get that, did they? 

Maybe it was his own fault, for keeping so much of himself hidden. How could they understand if he didn’t let them? 

But he couldn’t let them in, couldn’t let them know him, not that well. Not anymore. Maybe there had been a time, when They were small and docile and had never been hurt, but things were different now, and they had to keep themselves together somehow, because this shape was the only thing keeping them safe, and without it they’d be— 

He stayed in his room that night trying to look human, or at least to remember what that was, so he could find his way back again and go on deceiving them all. 

He found Five standing in the middle of the library one night. All the lights were off save for one lamp on the desk which threw a dim, warm glow in front of Five, making his body a dark silhouette. He stood in the middle of the room, his back to the door, something held in one hand. He stood very still. 

“Five?” 

No response. For one shameful moment, Ben considered leaving him there and crawling back in bed, cramps and restless dreams be damned. 

He walked into the room and reached out, put his hand on Five’s shoulder. “Hey, Five?” 

Five shuddered and turned around. Where Ben had expected to see irritation on his face at being interrupted, there was only a vague, lost look. As though Five had left something here, in this room, and come to find it, but had forgotten what, and for the life of him couldn’t think what it was. 

He was holding a...was that a pinecone? 

“You’re here,” said Five. “You’re back.” 

“What are you talking about? I never went anywhere.” 

“No. I guess you really didn’t.” 

“What are you doing?” 

“Just went for a walk.” 

His clothes were damp, and so was his hair. In the dim glow it was hard to make out. He couldn’t really tell. He couldn’t be sure. It couldn’t be. 

It just looked like there were flakes of snow in his hair. 

It hadn’t been cold enough for snow in months. 

“Are you feeling all right?” 

“I’m just fine,” Five said, some of his usual peevishness coming back. Ben had never been so glad to hear it. “I got to thinking and lost track of time, that’s all.” 

“Well...are you going to keep standing here, or go back to bed?” 

“After you,” Five said, and Ben couldn’t be sure, but he thought Five seemed grateful to have someone to follow up the stairs and back to his room. 

Sometimes Six thought about turning himself inside out. About opening the portal wide and swallowing himself whole. Then what would he look like? What would he see? Where would he be? What would he be? 

“Are we going to talk about what happened the other day?” 

“What is there to talk about?” 

“What was that, Ben?” 

Luther’s face was kind and sincere and for a second, Ben wanted to tell him everything. Lay it all at Luther’s feet, be the perfect penitent sinner. All his doubt and his resentment, every unkind thing he’d ever thought or done, every lie he’d ever told, the betrayal he was nursing as a fantasy, the one where he changed his name and walked out of the house and never looked back. How he wasn't what Luther thought he was at all. Not at all.

“It won’t happen again. It was just...a slip up.” 

Luther frowned. “Have you told Dad?” 

And then Ben knew he couldn’t tell Luther a damn thing. 

“No,” he said, the word dragged out of him, because it was still too hard, lying point-blank to Luther, after all this time. 

“You know you’re supposed to.” 

“Yeah.” 

“He could help you. If something’s...going wrong, if you’re having a hard time...” 

But nothing was going wrong. Nothing at all. Or if it was—it couldn’t be helped. What was natural to him was unnatural to everyone else. The skin-crawling anomaly was not an aberration, it was his nature, it was inevitable, it could not be fixed. He couldn't be fixed.

He smiled at his brother. “You’re right. I will. Thanks, Luther. ” 

Five stood in front of the tall window, his pocket watch in hand. He turned when Ben came up beside him, his face a serene mask on top of some howling whirlwind underneath. 

“Are the clouds moving?” 

“I’m worried about you.” 

“Just answer.” 

He looked outside, down at the yard, the dark line of trees. “Yes.” 

“So time is moving. That's good.” 

“You told me you would be careful.” 

“I am being.” For a moment they were quiet, looking down at the yard. Ben watched Allison and Luther walk across the lawn and lay a blanket on the grass beneath the oak tree and sit down. “I can’t help it any more than you can, you know.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Five was quiet for a beat, and then he looked at Ben and smiled with a childlike wonder, terror bright and sharp in his eyes. “Look,” he said. “My watch stopped. I don’t know when it happened. I don’t know when.” 

“It’s so quiet here,” Klaus sighed. “I could just stay like this forever.” 

He was lying on his back beneath the kitchen table, arms splayed out at his sides. 

“You can’t. Dad could walk in any second. Or one of the others.” 

Klaus laughed, an easy, breathy sound. “It doesn’t matter.” 

“You told me to try and not let them see you like this.” 

“Did I?” 

“Yes.” 

Klaus glanced over at him with lidded eyes, a pitying smile on his face. “I’m not making it easy for you, am I?” he said, and laughed. “Oh, don’t look like that. Come under here for a second, I want to show you something. I wrote my name down here when we were little, I think Diego carved his in with a knife here, too. Where are you going? Don’t be like that. Come on, lighten up, would you? You’re too damn serious all the time. It’s not good for you. Come back. Don’t leave. Okay, I’ll come out, just don’t leave me, okay?” 

He banged his head on the table as he clambered out from beneath it, looked shocked for a second, and burst into tears. 

Vanya took a pill. She played violin like a wind-up doll. She took a pill. 

Why hadn’t he ever really wondered what she took them for? Nerves. She had bad nerves. Of course. It made perfect sense. 

Nothing made any sense if he thought about it for too long. So he tried not to think. His mind went in circles. Vanya took a pill. Why? What for? Her nerves were bad, yes, bad. It had always been that way. It all made perfect sense. 

“I’ve thought about replacing it,” Five said, when Ben had asked him for the time one day only to have Five show him his broken watch. “But I’m afraid it would only freeze, too.” 

Vanya’s nerves and the way when she was little in which she used to go still and stare off into the distance deaf and unresponding to the sound of her name and she had bad nerves yes, bad 

( _“Stay with me._

_Speak to me. Why do you never_ _speak._ _Speak._

_What are you thinking of? What thinking?_

_What?_

_I never know what you are thinking. Think.”_ ) 

He didn’t even care for Eliot, didn’t care for poetry at all unless it made his heart beat faster, considered himself too stupid to understand it, but they’d read it in class and whatever he read stuck to him and never left, and whatever he heard someone saying he heard again and again, and he didn’t even think in his own words or his own voice anymore. 

Allison handed him his coffee and sat down, college pamphlets spread out on the table between them. He sipped the hot drink, the thing curling with pleasure at the heat as it scalded the back of his throat. 

“What do you think you’ll study?” he asked. 

“I don’t know. I’d be a good lawyer, wouldn’t I?” she said, and laughed. “I can’t decide. I want everything. What about you?” 

He shrugged, half-heartedly flipping open one of the flyers. Smiling young people stared back at him. Only a couple years or so older than they were. “I don’t know. I guess I should pick something useful.” 

“What about something you like?” She sipped her drink, tucking her pressed hair behind her ear. “If you had to choose right now, based on what you like the most, what would you choose?” 

He thought for a second. “I like reading books. But you can’t just do that. So I'd like to choose something that's at least helpful.” 

“Do you know what’s funny?” She looked around the store, but seemed to see right through it. “I could have anything I wanted, anything at all, couldn’t I? I guess I could even make the world a better place, if I knew who to talk to, and what to say. That would be helpful. But here I am,” she said, meeting his gaze. “I guess I’m just not that good of a person after all.” 

He wondered if the wrongness about him was slowly, tenderly driving them all out of their minds. Maybe it was just him. 

“Dad,” he said, paused at the open door to Hargreeves’ study. Now and then the door was propped open, and they could approach him there, like office hours. “I had a question.” 

That didn’t mean Hargreeves was obligated to pay them any heed. He sat at his desk reading from a machine and scratching in a leather bound notebook with a pen. He did not look up. 

“I was wondering about that nanny. About what happened to her. Is she still around?” 

“Come here, Number Six.” 

Six stepped into the room and waited. 

“I’ve told you not to mumble. If you’re going to speak, speak clearly.” 

“I said I was wondering about the nanny. The one you told me about.” 

“Hm? I should like to think you have more suitable pursuits to keep your mind occupied. There’s nothing to wonder about her.” 

“Well...what happened to her?” 

“How should I know?” 

“Was she really okay?” 

Hargreeves looked up for the first time, blinking at Six from behind his monocle. “Number Six.” 

“Yes, Dad.” 

“Do not waste my time again on flights of fancy or casual musings. Don’t waste your own time, either.” 

He stood still a moment, so that he could make sure his voice would come out even and polite when he said, “Yes, Dad.” 

“Good. How is your health?” 

“My health?” Hargreeves said nothing. He would not speak. He knew he had been heard and never repeated himself if he could help it. “It's fine. Normal.” 

Hargreeves nodded. “And you are keeping me up to date on any changes.” 

“Yes, I...Dad? Why are you asking me that?” 

“It’s about time we ran some more scans,” Hargreeves said. 

Ben should have known better than to come in here seeking answers and drawing attention to himself. 

“Okay,” he said. 

“Best to keep on top of things rather than be caught twiddling our thumbs.” 

“Yes, Dad.”

"And you can stop calling me that. I'm beginning to wonder if you don't have a memory issue, or if you're simply being impudent. You should have outgrown that habit by now. Your siblings stopped needing constant reminders long ago."

"Oh. Sorry, D—sorry."

He turned to go. He was almost out the door when Hargreeves said, “She had a grown son of her own. Last I heard of her she’d been released upon making a full recovery, and had gone to stay with him.” 

Ben turned around. Hargreeves was back to staring at his instruments and scribbling in the notebook. “Thank you. I...I always wondered. Do you think...is there any way I could...I just feel like I owe her something. A thanks, or an apology. Something.” 

Without looking up, Hargreeves said, “I’m sure she’d prefer it if you didn’t. Most people tend not to want reminders of unpleasantness.” 

Of course, he’d known that much already. But Hargreeves had a point. The last thing he wanted to do was to hurt a perfect stranger any more than he already had. 

The sound of soft crying came from Allison’s bedroom. Two heartbeats. He paused outside his own room. Her door was open just a crack, and there she was on the bed, with one arm wrapped around Klaus, who was hunched over and crying into his hands. She rubbed her hand up and down his back, shushing him. 

“You’ll be okay,” she whispered. “Tell me how I can help, tell me what to do.” 

“There’s—nothing—you can’t.” 

“Come on, Klaus, snap out of this...you know it isn’t real, you’ll feel fine when it wears off...” 

He whimpered and shook his head, ground the heels of his hands against his eyes. 

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. The sounds he made were heartbroken. Ben couldn’t move, caught between the warring impulse to barge into the room and to slip into his own room and shut the door.

"Just make it—stop."

Allison bent her head and murmured in Klaus’ ear. “I heard a rumor you were asleep.” 

Klaus’ eyes slid shut. His breathing deepened and evened out. He slumped against her, and for a moment she held him there. 

Ben slipped away before she could catch him watching. 

“What if he won’t let us go?” 

Allison looked up from her mathematics. They were studying under the tree in the backyard. There were tests to take, if they were serious about applying. Paperwork to complete, applications to send. 

“He can’t stop us. We’ll be adults when it’s time to start.” 

“He could still say no.” 

“What would you do, if he does?” She leveled an even gaze at him, a challenge. “Will you stay?” 

He looked down. “I...but we can’t just...what about the others?” 

Allison counted off on her fingers. “We already know Klaus is taking off with us. Vanya has probably been free to go whenever she wants all along, he has no reason not to let her. Five’s going to do whatever he wants. Neither of them plans on staying. I talked to Diego the other day, and he told me he’s getting out one way or another when he’s old enough to live on his own.” 

“What about Luther?” 

Her face closed off, mask-like and serene. “It’s his choice to make. Nobody can make it for him.” 

_Except you,_ he thought. 

“So what will you do? You can’t stay on the fence forever. You can’t have it both ways. You’re going to have to choose.” 

“I hate what we do here,” he said, his voice almost a whisper, as if the tree might be spying on them. “I’ve never wanted any of this. But...we can’t just leave him.” 

“What good are you doing him, if you stay here out of obligation, but hate every second of it? If you stay here and turn into exactly what you’re so afraid of? That’s a waste, Ben. If you stay, don’t do it for him. That’ll only make you resent him in the end. You know it will.” 

He got the sense she’d said this very thing to herself, long before she’d said it to him. It sounded like a well-worn mantra.

“Maybe you could talk to him. If anybody could convince him, it would be you.” 

She looked at him, her eyes narrowed, hurt flashing across her face for a second, and he realized the unintended implication in his words. 

“I didn’t mean—I meant because you guys talk about stuff, and you know how to get through to him. He might listen to you, that’s all.” 

“It’s fine,” she said. “I know what you meant. We have time," she said, and the mask fell away, and he saw that she was afraid. Brave, poised Allison, letting him see her fear. "Ben, promise me. We’re going to get out of here. We’ll turn seventeen—apply in the fall—and then—and then, no matter what, even if we don’t get in anywhere, we’re going to go anyway.” 

“But where? I don’t know anything about anything, I—what will we do? Where will we live? How will we take care of ourselves?” 

“I don’t know, okay? But I'm not worried about that. All I know is—we’re falling apart here, we can’t stay. It’s not good for us. For any of us. We just have to get out. I'm leaving and I don't want you to still be here when I do. Please.” 

“Okay,” he mumbled. “Okay, Allison. I promise.” 

Luther cornered him again after training. 

“Have you thought about what I told you?” 

Ben smiled at him—the dumb, kind smile that once let him slip through confrontation without a hitch. “Sorry, about what?” 

“You know what. About how you’re holding back.” 

“Oh. That.” Luther waited. When it was clear he wouldn’t speak, Ben went on. “Not...really.” 

“We could have another mission any day now,” Luther said. “And you know they’re getting more challenging. Not that it’s anything we can’t handle. Just that...there’s good reason for all of us to be prepared.” 

Ben looked down. He couldn’t meet Luther’s eyes. “Am I...am I really that far behind? I know I’m Number Six, but—but I’m holding the rest of you back that much?” 

“No. No, Ben, it’s nothing like that.” 

“Then why do you keep singling me out?” 

“Because...because you listen. Because I know you could do more, be more, and I just...I don’t always know how to approach the others anymore.” Luther wilted, looking lost for a moment, before he rallied himself and spoke faster, his eyes narrowing. “Diego won’t take even a shred of constructive criticism from anybody, least of all from me, Five never has, and he's more worried about his own interests than the team, and Klaus is—I haven’t figured out how to talk to him yet without just making everything worse. And Allison...has she said anything weird to you, lately?” 

“Weird like...what?” 

“She keeps trying to talk to me about...about doing something else. About leaving.” 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah. I know. I couldn’t believe it, either. Have you noticed anything going on with her? Anything at all that might explain it? Has something happened? I just don’t understand how this could come out of the blue. Where is this coming from?” 

“She...she mentioned it. The idea, I mean.” 

“Really? What did she say?” 

“You should really just talk to her about this yourself, you know.” 

“Tell me, Six.” 

“Well...she just got to talking about what we’d do, if we were to go and do something else...” 

“So it was a hypothetical? Like she’s just curious?” Luther nodded. “That makes sense. She’s always wanted to try new things. So it seems like just an idea she’s thinking about, like a phase?” 

“Well...no, I wouldn’t say that, I think she’s...already put a lot of thought into it.” 

“Who else has she talked to about this?” 

“Um...everyone, I think, to some degree? Some more than others?” 

Ben couldn’t tell what the emotion was on Luther’s face. A degree of shock, certainly, like someone had punched him in the stomach, though there was something resigned about it, too. Like he were some martyr who had expected betrayal, but not how badly it would hurt.

“They’re all thinking of leaving,” he said, his voice quiet and deceptively calm. “Everyone. That’s what you’re saying?” 

“I, I don’t know, for sure, what everybody else is—” 

“I’m not stupid, you know, or totally oblivious, like you guys sometimes seem to think. I hear how they talk, I see what goes on. But I told myself this was all normal. Everyone’s growing up, things change, we’ll change, but everything will even out and everything will go how it’s supposed to in the end. But they’re all really thinking of giving up.” 

“Luther...it’s not personal,” Ben said, wincing. “It’s not you that they’re trying to leave. It's just...this place, and... You get that, don’t you?” 

“That’s not how things are,” he said, his jaw set, his eyes steely. “They might tell themselves that, but we all know the truth.” 

“What truth?” 

“You can’t just turn your back on your family.” 

“It’s...that’s not what this is. At least—it's not that simple.” 

“Some things are simple. Some things are black and white and everybody telling themselves the world is so gray and up for interpretation, they’re only fooling themselves. ” 

“Haven’t you...ever thought about what you’d like to do...you know, when you grow up?” 

The question sounded pitiful and childish the second it was out of his mouth. There were probably a hundred other ways to have worded it, but that was the one which had come to him. Maybe because they’d never really gotten to ask it of themselves before. 

“I never had to think about it, because I’ve always known.” 

“But what if things were different?” 

“They aren’t. Why wonder? And even if they were, I wouldn’t want anything else. The Phenomena is important, Six. We’re important. We’re going to save everyone. Who would trade that? For what?” 

“For a life, I think,” he said. “For a choice. Why don’t you talk to the others and try and understand?” 

“It’s selfish. I don’t want to understand it, and I can’t. How sure is she, Ben? How sure are all of them? How set on leaving?” 

“You should really talk to them about this for yourself. It’s really not my place to say...” 

Luther nodded. He looked down, quiet for a moment, before fixing Ben with a burning gaze, like he felt fire licking his heels. “I know you’re not like that. I know you understand. You wouldn’t leave.” 

Ben swallowed the lump in his throat. He nodded. 

“Promise you won’t leave me here,” Luther said, his voice quiet. And that was his request in the end, when they got right down to it—a child’s demand, not a hero’s. Not promise me you won’t abandon the mission, or turn your back on your family—just don't leave me here alone. 

“I promise,” he said. 

What else could he say, when it was put to him like that? What kind of a person would leave their brother behind? 

Not any kind of person he wanted to be.

It felt like the only thing to do, in the moment. It didn't feel like a lie.

He just wanted to do the right thing, by all of them. Instead he hadn't done right by any of them. Not a single one. They all thought he was nice, and kind, and good, but he wasn't any of those things. He only wanted to be. Good people didn't make promises they couldn't keep.

Still, he couldn't think of another thing he could do. He didn't feel like he'd lied. Even though he knew it was impossible, still, some part of him believed that because he had meant what he said, to both of them, that both promises were sound. The future was only in abstract—his siblings' need was immediate. They looked at him and asked him to confirm that he was who they thought he was, and they were who they thought they were. How could he do anything but tell them exactly what they needed to hear?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...the further we go in this story the more pain I experience with each update...  
> Casting my mind back to what it was like to be all of these different ages has been quite a trip. Sixteen was not /that/ long ago but at the same time...who was that! Not me! I've never really written a story that's so much about growing up and follows characters so closely over a big span of time before...it's been interesting.


	10. Diversion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone acts like a teenager for a night. Ben is presented with door number three...is it still door number three if someone has come along and boarded up doors one and two?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, dear reader, it's been a while. I've been working hard on my original writing projects and on school, so I can at least assure you that I've been doing well during the long absence. I hope that all of you are doing well and that if anyone is still keeping tabs on this story, that I can at least offer you a diversion in these trying times.
> 
> I'm behind on replying to comments, but please know that I read all of them and remember them and am so grateful for all of you who have read and let me know your thoughts on the story! Take care everyone!! <3
> 
> Also: underage drug use in this chapter, brief drug-related spell of anxiety that is quickly resolved. Don't think this content should be an issue for anyone familiar with the source material, but just felt like putting it out there.

They were sixteen and Allison had talked her way into attending junior prom at the local high school. All day long she’d been flitting around, having her nails done with Charlotte, visiting a salon, and holing herself up in her room before any of them could see the result of all this fuss about her appearance. Not that any of them begrudged her this night. At least, Ben didn’t think anybody did. He personally had no interest in going to some dance with a bunch of strangers, but he was happy that Allison was making this happen for herself, even if she seemed more stressed than anything else.

Luther had also shut himself in his room. Ben had scarcely seen him all day. The sound of loud music came thudding through the walls of his room, audible in Klaus’ room, where he was watching his brother attempt to roll a joint in under five seconds.

“Are you ready? Are you watching?” Klaus said, and then immediately fumbled the rolling paper and spilling ground bud all over the floor. “Fuck!”

“Wow. You’re right, you’re really great at this.”

“Shut up. I can’t believe you’re really going to smoke with me.”

“I said I would just try it. But only a little.”

“Still. What a momentous occasion, I feel like there should be a ceremony or something.”

“I really don’t think so,” he said, watching Klaus roll the joint with some apprehension. “I really can just try a little, right? Like I’m not going to—it's not going to be like, crazy intense?”

“It’s gonna be great, just relax.”

“I don’t know about this.”

“Come on,” Klaus whined. “Do I need to start citing the studies again? I did research for you! Actual research! There are medical benefits! Get all that scare-tactic bullshit out of your head and quit worrying.”

“I just don’t want to feel out of control, or not like myself.”

“Oh, I want to peer pressure you so bad...but look, if you really don’t want to, then don’t. Like, do I think it would do you some good to realize that actually, everything is just fine and the world continues to spin if you loosen up a little? Yes, yes I do. But it’s also fine if you’re just not feeling it.”

“I don’t know...I am curious. I do want to try.”

“Look, it’s a little weed, it’s not going to suddenly turn you into a different person or make you totally lose your shit. And worst case, you get a little antsy, you take a little CBD to even you out, and we’ll chill and listen to music and it’ll be totally fine.”

Ben chewed his lip, his mind racing. The thing coiled in his stomach, sensing his indecision, and that about made up his mind. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t give up even a fraction of his self-control. What if he lost the battle of wills, what if They overtook him, what if he wasn’t himself anymore? What if?

Here he was, thinking about leaving home, going to school, getting a job--but he couldn't even trust himself with this?

“Okay,” he blurted. “Fine, let’s just do it already before I change my mind.”

“Yes,” Klaus cheered, quickly bringing the joint to his lips and flicking the lighter a few times before the small flame lit. His eyes crossed as he stared down, puffing and waiting for the end to light, at last taking it from his mouth and turning his face to the side to exhale a long stream of pale smoke. “It’s lit, here, take it,” he said, and before his worry got the best of him, Ben took the joint and did his best to mimic what he’d just watched Klaus do.

He coughed a little when he exhaled, but he hadn’t taken a very deep drag, so it wasn’t as bad as he’d expected. He quickly passed the joint back to Klaus.

“Did you even get any?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“I don’t really think you did. Here, take another hit, then slow down and see how you feel.”

Ben breathed deeper this time, and felt the hot smoke filling his lungs. He passed the joint back quickly, exhaling a plume of smoke in a surprised rush of air.

“There you go,” Klaus said.

“Should I be feeling it yet?”

“I don’t know, do you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Some people don’t get high the first time. It’s a thing. Like, your brain’s receptors don’t know what to do yet. The cannabinoid receptors.”

“Great, I got all worried and now nothing’s going to happen.”

“Well, that’s some people. Maybe. I don’t really remember what all I read about that. Just give it a minute.”

“What’s it supposed to feel like?”

“Uh...good? Your body relaxes and you get sort of a headrush, I guess.”

Klaus held the joint out, and without thinking, Ben accepted it and took another drag before passing it back. Klaus tapped the ash off into an empty mug and leaned over to flick through his scattered CD’s.

“What should we listen to? Gotta find something to tune that mess out,” he said, tapping the knuckles of one hand against the wall he shared with Luther, where the sounds of generic rock music reverberated dully through the wall. 

Ben laughed. “Whatever you want.”

“I’ve got it,” Klaus crowed, emerging from the pile of laundry and junk on the floor waving a battered old Kidz Bop CD.

“Oh god, please no.”

Klaus laughed and cranked the volume on his little radio, drowning out the sounds of Luther’s angst-ridden music. Ben put his hands over his ears. “This is fucking horrible.”

“This is  _ art _ .”

There came the sound of someone’s fist pounding the wall and making everything on the shelf rattle. “Turn it  _ down, _ Klaus,” Luther yelled.

“He was a skater boy, she said see you later boy, he wasn’t good enough for her!”

Ben cracked up, suddenly completely overcome with laughter that had arose out of nowhere to fill his entire being. He couldn’t make it stop, and didn’t really want to. Luther banged his fist on the wall again and Klaus relented, cranking the dial on his radio to turn the volume down low. “Okay, okay, geez! Now you know how it feels to have somebody blasting his shitty music at you all night long!”

Ben wiped tears from his eyes, gasping for breath as the laughter settled down, though the giddy feeling remained. “Aw, give him a break.”

“Why? What’s his problem? He’s been sulky all day.”

“You know...Allison’s got that prom thing...”

“So? If he really wanted to go, I’m sure she’d have found a way to make it happen.”

“It’s not just that. It’s, you know...he thinks we’re all going to leave...and then he'll be, you know, alone here.”

“Well, we are, aren’t we?”

“Sh...you can’t just say that.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“He’s being dumb.”

“He’s really upset, Klaus. I think we all need to try harder, talking to him about stuff.”

“Us try harder? How about he tries for a change?”

“He does try...”

“Yeah, to make us be his perfect little minions.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Okay, okay...look, do we have to talk about this? Right now? It’s sort of killing the mood for me.”

“Okay, you’re right...”

Ben couldn’t argue with that. It seemed like lately all he thought about were worries about how his siblings were drifting away.

Klaus wanted to go downstairs and watch television, but Ben was too scared that someone (Luther) would see them and be able to tell they were high, so they just listened to music and played games on the old busted up GameBoys Klaus had stolen at some point from Diego and Allison, who had procured them in a fit of childhood rebellion after Christmas one year when they’d all received new tailored uniforms for gifts.

Now and then Ben glanced at the clock, checking the time and wondering how Allison was getting along. “Isn’t she supposed to get going soon?”

Klaus shrugged. “Maybe she changed her mind.”

Following a negotiation of favors Ben was frankly glad he knew nothing about, Five had agreed to jump with Allison to the high school so she wouldn’t have to take public transport or have Charlotte pick her up and see where she lived.

Ben wondered how many other separate lives his siblings lived, ones he wasn’t a part of. He didn’t have a secret life, he only—

But that wasn’t really true, was it?

When had he started keeping so many secrets? When had he started telling so many little lies that turned into bigger lies, making so many promises he couldn’t keep?

The giddy, hazy feeling in his head and chest was now accompanied by a heavy dread and guilt. He felt unable to speak. Unable to stand, to so much as move his head. Was he breathing? He took a deep breath, and then another, because all of a sudden it seemed like the process was no longer automatic, and if he didn’t make a conscious effort, it would just stop. When had his heart started to beat so fast? He couldn’t speak. He was locked in his body. Trapped inside it, stuck way down in a deep place and the ends of his eyes were just pinpricks of light at the top of a well that went way down into the depths of the earth and he was stuck at the bottom.

“Look, Luther’s going to stay in his room all night, can we please go downstairs and get something to eat and watch something?”

“I feel weird.”

“Weird how?”

Ben stared at the skin on the underside of his arms where he could faintly see the blue tracery of veins, and the thing pulsing sluggishly, barely visible to anyone not looking for it, like his skin was breathing, and the motion made him dizzy. “Weird. I don’t know. I’m fine. I might be dying? But I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried, I think you’re just like, too much up in your own head right now. The high kind of comes in waves, we’re at the top right now, give it a couple minutes and just chill and I think you’ll feel okay.”

“My heart feels like it's going really fast.”

“It raises your heartrate a little, but it’s nothing to worry about—try not to fixate on it, okay? Here, you wanna go in the backyard for a minute, get some fresh air?”

Ben nodded, and together they went downstairs and into the backyard, lit only by the porch light, and he did feel better once he was outside, and though the dread remained a presence crouching behind him, he was able to move through and away from it. They walked in a small loop through the yard, and Ben felt himself calming down to the familiar sound of Klaus relaying some anecdote he only half listened to.  


“Thanks,” he said. “I feel okay now.”

Klaus bumped their shoulders together. "You sure?"

Ben nodded.  As they were going back inside, they ran into Diego and Vanya emerging from the basement, speaking in low voices to each other. They shut up as soon as they saw Klaus and Ben.

“Whoa. Where the hell are you two going, Hot Topic job interview?” Klaus said, laughing.

Diego flushed and glared, shushing him. “Quiet. Do you have to be so freaking loud?”

“Are you wearing—is that eyeliner? Oh my _ god.  _ What are you two _doing_?”

Ben tried to stand very straight and still. What was he supposed to do with his face? He tried for a reassuring smile, feeling like a hostage made to speak to a camera and say _everything is fine, nothing to see here_.   


Judging by the creeped out look Vanya was giving him, he was not doing a very good job. “I could ask you guys the same thing.”

“Nothing,” Ben blurted. “We’re doing nothing. How are you?”

“Um...good?”

“That’s good,” he said, smiling wider and nodding. Beside him, Klaus made a choking sound of poorly-stiffled laughter, and Ben felt his own mouth quivering as he tried not to laugh himself. Nothing was at all funny—and yet if Klaus cracked and started laughing, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from joining in.

Diego frowned at Klaus. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Klaus said, his voice distorted with laughter, which made him almost sound as though he were about to start crying, and indeed his eyes were pink and watery. “Just your face.”

“Shut up, I look great.”

Ben took a closer look at the two of them. They were dressed in dark street clothes, like they were going out somewhere. Clothes he’d rarely seen them wear, except for their late night music practice sessions. Vanya even had dark makeup on her eyes.

“Are you guys going somewhere?” he said.

“No. Are you going somewhere?”

He blinked. It took him a second to think about that. “No?” he said, glancing at Klaus, as though maybe Diego knew something he didn’t about his own plans for the evening.

“You’re such an awful liar,” Klaus said, snickering at Diego.

“You’re one to talk,” Diego scoffed, folding his arms and looking at Ben. “What’s he dragged you into this time?”

“What? Nothing. Why would you think that?”

“Oh, just tell us, come on—you know you’re just going to get in trouble again, trying to cover up for him.”

“Um, hello? What if he dragged  _ me  _ into something?” Klaus said.

“Uh-huh, yeah, sure.”

Just then a door opened upstairs, and they all quieted and looked upwards.

Allison stood at the top of the stairs illuminated by the gold light of her bedroom at her back. She stood tall and straight in her heels, one arm braced fawn-like against the wall the only indication that she was not so sure-footed. Her dress was a pale pink color which fell in a gauzy skirt about her feet, the bodice glittering with elegant beadwork. She wore her hair braided in an updo, a cascade of loose curls framing her face.

“Well? What do you guys think?” she said, the bossy, self-assured tone not quite strong enough to cover up a hint of vulnerability.

“Oh my god,” Klaus said, his voice low and quiet. “Who the hell is she?”

“It’s a pretty dress,” Diego said. “Where’d you steal it?”

Allison flushed. “It’s being  _ borrowed _ , not stolen, and that’s none of your business.”

“You look amazing,” Ben said. “Like a movie star or something.”

“Really?” she said, with a pleased, sort of shy smile. “You think so?”

“Of course he thinks so!” Klaus yelled. “Have you looked at yourself? Ugh, I almost wish I was going now.”

“It’s not too late,” she said, surprising them all. “I could get you in. If you wanted.”

“Oh,” Klaus said, faltering. “I don’t know...no, that's your thing, you'll just have to tell me how it is.”

“Well, you have like, five seconds to decide if you change your mind,” she said, turning and knocking on Luther’s door. “I’m leaving now.”

“Okay. Have fun.”

“Seriously? You’re really going to be like this? You’re not even going to say bye?”

“Bye,” he called through the door.

Allison wilted, then rallied herself and squared her shoulders. “Fine. Goodbye, Luther.”

She came marching down the stairs and left the eerie note of finality in her farewell echoing in the house long after she’d left.

The next evening, Hargreeves called Six to his study.

It was not unheard of, for one of them to have a private meeting with their father, although it was decidedly more typical for it to be Number One, not Six being asked for. He went with some trepidation, mind racing. What had he done wrong? Did Hargreeves know how he’d been helping cover for Klaus’ new penchant for drinking and smoking, or how he’d been involved in hiding how Vanya and Diego had now snuck out four times to see shows and play music, or Five’s worrisome time-related experiments? Was it about how he was falling behind, holding back, forever a disappointment, even a liability to the team? What?

Hargreeves was sat in the high-backed armchair, and motioned for Six to take a seat across from him. “Do you have something to tell me, Number Six?”

Ben swallowed a lump in his throat. He felt pale and clammy. “I...I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

“So that would be a no, then.”

“I...I don’t know.”

“So your sister was mistaken when she indicated to me that you are among those of your siblings considering pursuing higher education.”

College? He wanted to talk about college?

For a moment the bottom fell out of the room, and he was falling. Allison had told on him, Allison had thrown him under the bus, she’d ratted him out and now he was in trouble and now he was going to see what a stupid idea this whole thing had been, and why it would never work—

But that didn’t make any sense. Allison was serious about college, about leaving in general. She must have spoken to Hargreeves just like she’d said she would, testing the waters.

And then he felt shame, because he realized that all along, he’d imagined she would bear the brunt of this little crusade. That she would blaze the trail on her own, and he’d be able to follow along behind in her shadow. He hadn’t thought about what he would say, if he was made to confront Hargreeves directly. That was Allison’s forte, not his.

It didn’t matter now—it was happening, ready or not.

“No, sir,” he said. “She was right. We’ve talked about college, and I’ve been...considering it.”

“Hm.” Hargreeves gaze slid past him, out the window that looked down on the lawn, although Ben had the impression he was looking much further away than that. “So it was your brother who was mistaken then, when he told me you were among those intending to stay.”

Ben flushed, heat rising across his chest and face, the back of his neck. “I—no, he wasn’t mistaken. I also talked to Luther about...that. Staying.”

“If you claim that both of them are telling the truth, then you understand why I must conclude that the source of the contradiction is not any lie or fault of theirs, but yours, Number Six.”

“I understand,” he said, feeling hollow and bloodless. It was one thing to know he’d been dishonest—another to have his father know it, and to lay it out so plainly, so that he could not look away or deny it.

“I also want you to understand that I have held these accounts in confidence. Only you and I know the contradiction you’ve created.”

Horrible, cowardly relief flooded him. So Hargreeves hadn’t told Allison or Luther what the other had said—so they didn’t know he’d made them both a promise, both of which he couldn’t possible keep. He was still in their eyes the brother they’d always known, the one they could confide in and rely on, for a little while longer at least.

“I’d like you to tell me which of them you told the truth. I don’t care for contradictions.”

“I...I told them both the truth,” Ben said, knowing it was impossible, knowing Hargreeves could never accept such an answer—but knowing that it was also as honest as he could possibly be. “In the moment, at least, I meant it—or I thought I did—or I wanted to.”

“You’re conflicted, then.”

“Yes. I guess I am.”

Hargreeves nodded, still gazing out the window, eyes cold and desolate and remote as the surface of the moon. “I can’t say I’m surprised. You’ve never shown much initiative. Never been very decisive. Especially not when stronger wills are decided upon opposite courses of action. But time will tell.” Hargreeves looked at him at last, his gaze piercing, and Ben felt himself an insect pinned to a board. “I want to be clear that as long as you live under this roof, you will abide by the same standards as ever.”

“I understand.”

“And should you leave this house, you will remain a member of the Academy, whether you wish to recognize yourself as such or not. But you will be eighteen soon. As I told Allison, you require no permission from me to leave at that point, if that is what you decide to do. But leaving the house need not mean turning your back on all we’ve worked for. We can negotiate the terms of your enrollment, your relocation, your continued participation in Academy business. And you can expect my support in your endeavors, so long as those terms are upheld.”

What was that? What was Hargreeves saying? That even if he left, he would still be part of the Academy, still called on for missions, still beholden to the same code of conduct he always had been, still waiting for the sky to fall and the alarm to ring and the end of the world to come crashing down around his ears? His whole vision of the future became muddled and unrecognizable. He had seen two starkly diverging paths—stay or leave. Now Hargreeves had taken them and twisted them. Was he trapped or was he saved? There was no way out, on the one hand—but on the other hand, he didn’t have to choose. He could have it both ways, keep both promises. But what did that mean, to accept Hargreeve’s terms? What did it mean if he didn’t?

“Of course, if you choose to go your own way and leave this house, you can’t expect to benefit any further from the Academy’s resources. But I don’t foresee you going that way. It would be a very drastic choice to make, not one easily taken back, if it could be taken back at all. In your particular case, for reasons I should think you would find obvious, it would be in your best interest to remain in contact with those who are most familiar with your condition, so that it can continue to be properly monitored.”

Ben felt sick. Of course. Of course he needed the Academy, probably more than it needed him—he was only Number Six after all, an expendable digit really, a minor player. But this place was made to accommodate him in ways the world outside would never, ever be. Here everyone was used to what he was—as much as anybody could ever possibly be used to that. If he cut ties, rejected the Academy and the mission, where would he find that sense of belonging, however faulty and threadbare it was, ever again? Where could he even go to a doctor if he needed one, without Hargreeves and his copious medical files and his mysterious connections and his wealth and influence, all of which shielded him and sheltered him more than he knew, more than he could possibly recognize from inside the bubble of the house?

“I understand,” he said.

“I knew that you would.” Hargreeves face was like the face of an old deity carved in stone. Something inhuman with a human likeness. “Do you know, Number Six, of all the possible pitfalls I imagined, I did not account for human irrationality to the extent I now see is necessary. You can raise seven children, give them the highest quality of every material need, the most excellent education, the best training—and still, you can’t count on them to play their part. Nurture was all under my control...but your natures remain, so resistant to change, to being shaped. Even with the world at stake, you cannot count on anyone to act the way you think they ought to. There’s something to that which I think you could understand, about self-denial. What does it matter what any of us wants to do, when we know what we must to do? Even at personal cost. Am I wrong to think you could understand that?”

“No, sir. I think I understand.”

“What does it matter how good our intentions, how lofty our ideals, if we aren’t willing to accept even the barest personal sacrifice? Do you think I’ve been needlessly cruel to you? Do you think every lesson in self-control has been for nothing? These are tools I’ve given you, Number Six. Tools the world out there would have left you without, and told you how fortunate you were, to be helpless and dependent to your own impulses. Denial, temperance, control—qualities you will find sorely lacking in the wider world, but which you will nevertheless find indispensable no matter where you go or what you choose to make of your life. That is what I have tried to give you, no matter what you should choose to do with it.”

Ben said nothing. He knew Hargreeves expected no reply, did not need him to answer.

Before he stood to go, Hargreeves told him, “Remember that there is a reason you were all born the way you are. You have a purpose to fulfill. That's more than most can say. Some spend their whole lives looking for that, and die without finding it. Let it be enough.”

Ben nodded, and then he left, unable to imagine what threat the world could possibly face which he possessed any antidote for, unable even to imagine a world in which there could be any good reason at all for the way he had been born.  



	11. Seventeen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ah, the polarity of this fic...it's all either sprawling seven-person soap opera arguments, or long-winded internal monologues on the nature of monstrosity vs. humanity. Sorry, what can I say...I like when they're being dramatic.
> 
> Also, all of you who leave comments threatening Reggie make me laugh...you're all quite right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in two days? Yes. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Seventeen...[like the Sharon van Etten song](https://open.spotify.com/track/7yMYqHqzye8vtyiHqdVlZw?si=VePQrZNSTKuYVW-_G0phLA), which always makes me emotional...just like writing this chapter did.

Their seventeenth birthday arrived without fanfare. No plans, no schemes to convince Hargreeves to let them have some sort of outing. Perhaps they had outgrown childish things. Maybe they were all too busy preparing for their own fast-approaching futures. Or maybe they’d just gotten tired of sharing a day amongst the seven of them. 

Ben woke to nausea, wracked by cramps that rose and fell in waves all up and down his body. There was too much input, too much sensation, the world lying around him like a shattered kaleidoscope. He blinked up at the ceiling with too many eyes, tasting the air, disoriented, terrified, ready to rip apart anything that moved because in this state he was vulnerable, and anything living was a potential threat. He pulled the covers over his head and stayed in bed past the ringing of his alarm calling them all to breakfast. 

Knocking at the door. Luther’s strong drumbeat of a heart. “Hey, Six, you awake in there?” 

“Yeah,” he called, but his voice came out all wrong, as though there were interference crackling in his throat, creating an inhuman, almost electrical buzz, like an insect. He cleared his throat, knowing it would do no good, and tried to enunciate clearly. “Just give me a minute.” 

“Okay,” Luther said, moving down the hall and down the stairs. 

The Horror that morning was like a fussy tenant who would not stop messing with the thermostat and moving all the furniture around, pacing and opening and shutting windows. It could not get comfortable with the confines of the body. It pressed and prodded and rearranged, making their skin bubble and his insides twist in knots. 

He wondered how long they could go on like this. If it would kill him one day, by accident, or from desperation, or for no reason at all. How much longer could he have, really, with this sentient malignancy eating him up inside, playing tug of war with the body, him always straining forwards while They pulled back? 

Another knock. “Yo, Six, wakey wakey,” Diego yelled, not pausing to wait for a reply as he slid down the bannister. 

Ben groaned and clutched the blanket tighter. He felt his spine arching unnaturally (naturally, naturally, what was this if not their nature?) and his muscles tensed and ached from the strain. 

So this was not going to be one of their better days. 

Fine. They couldn’t all be winners. 

A gentler knock at the door, Vanya’s voice. “Ben, are you okay?” 

What could he say? She, of all of them, would know he was lying. He grit his teeth and sat up, doing his damndest to beat the thing back, make it still and small and silent. “I’m okay,” he said. “Just not feeling great.” 

“Then you’re not okay.” 

“I’ll be fine, just give me a minute. Go on down.” 

“I’ll wait.” 

“Don’t. There’s no reason for us both to be late.” 

“If you only need a minute, we won’t be late.” 

For a moment, he was angry at her. If she’d just leave him alone, he could deal with this on his own time. But he didn’t want her getting into trouble, just because she’d been stubborn enough to wait on him, so he had to move now. 

Wincing and moving gingerly, as if any slight bump might jostle their whole body out of shape, he slid out of bed and clumsily dressed as fast as he could, not looking in the mirror once before yanking the door open, avoiding her gaze and tugging his sleeves down over his hands. “Let’s go.” 

“Happy birthday,” she said. 

He met her gaze. It was dark and knowing and deep, and the soft sad smile on her face brought a light to her eyes that did nothing to diminish the melancholy quality of her expression. 

“Happy birthday,” he said, and followed her down the stairs. 

Mom had made eggs and bacon and chocolate-chip banana pancakes, with smiling chocolate-chip faces. Like they were still eight years old and might ask to lick the batter off the spoon. She ruffled his hair as he passed by. 

“Happy birthday,” she said, smiling. “Feeling okay, sweetheart?” 

“Yes, Mom,” he said, unable to look at her beautiful, perfect face for long. It hurt too much. It hurt because he loved her, but he couldn’t trust her, and the guilt he felt for that sometimes swallowed him whole. 

“Be seated, children. There’s no excuse for tardiness,” Hargreeves said. 

He had to be calm. He had to be perfectly in control. He did not want Hargreeves to know he was struggling. Any hint of the thing acting out would be taken as a failure on his part, a weakness of character or willpower, a cause for concern, something to be monitored and documented with more scans and tests, something to be fixed. He did not want fixing. He wanted to be allowed to exist, just for a day, without constant surveillance—both by Hargreeves and by his own self. He wanted to let himself be, whatever that meant, whatever that looked like. 

But you did not always get what you wanted. Not even most of the time. So instead he would do his best to do what he always did—fade into the background, overshadowed by his siblings, safe and insignificant. 

Despite the nausea, he was starving, an unfortunate combination he was all too familiar with. He ate mechanically in silence, listening to the clink of silverware, the faltering, murmured conversation of his siblings, the rustle of Hargreeves’ newspaper pages, the thousands of whispering voices speaking in a language he did not understand but which was as familiar as his own heartbeat— 

The thing twitched and his shoulder jerked, sending his fork clattering to the ground. He bit his tongue to stifle a curse and pushed his chair back, reaching blindly for the utensil and banging his head hard on the bottom of the table when he went to straighten up. Pain radiated across the back of his head and down his neck and he came up biting his cheek, his eyes watering, momentarily stunned by a brief but powerful surge of anger. The thing rippled beneath his skin, a small shockwave of hurt. If they’d just left him alone, just left them alone, just let them be for one morning... 

“Ouch,” Klaus said, wincing in sympathy. “You okay?” 

Small, dark, winged things were fluttering at the edges of his vision. The voices were insistent. They wanted to play his throat and lungs like a pipe organ but he would not let them. 

“I’m okay.” 

The Horror rattled the bars of its cage but he could not let it be seen, had to suppress it, or else what was going to become of him out there in the world that was not ready for Them? His stomach lurched. He was hungry. He was going to be sick. 

“You may get a new utensil and rejoin us, Number Six,” said Hargreeves, without glancing up from his paper. 

Ben did as he was told. 

There was no day off for their birthday that year, which fell on a weekday, so he sat in a queasy haze through their morning lessons, scribbling nonsensical annotations in the margins of _Beowulf_ and staring glassy-eyed in world history during Diego’s presentation on the economic and environmental impact of the Industrial Revolution. By physics he was nearly in tears, staring hopelessly at his sheet of word problems, knowing he was doomed when the end of the week came round and they would have to demonstrate their understanding in some sort of practical assessment. He just wanted to go somewhere small and dark and hidden where no one could see them, where he could give in and let Them work out this anxious restless energy until they both felt better and whole and settled in the body again. Instead he was making himself sick and making them angry and resentful. Running intervals did nothing to help; if anything, it only made him more jittery and uncomfortable. By the time the day was through, he was resigned to using his extra hours of birthday free time to relax with a book. 

That idea went out the window when Allison came into the library, holding the keys to the van aloft and jangling them. 

He’d curled up on the low sofa in a ball with his face pressed against the back, breathing evenly in the soft darkness, arms wrapped around himself, listening to Klaus and Diego argue over the rules of Crazy Eights. Someone sat on the couch beside him. 

“Are you okay?” Vanya said. 

He nodded, his cheek rustling against the soft fabric, his voice muffled by the cushions when he said, “Yeah, I’m good, just tired.” 

And then Allison came in and said, “So who’s up for a little adventure, or would you losers really rather not do anything on our birthday?” 

“Are those the keys?” Diego said, his eyes shining. “How did you do that?” 

“I asked nicely.” 

She couldn’t have rumored Hargreeves directly, or he’d know, and there would be consequences. Either she really had convinced him all on her own, or she’d used her power with such grace and subtlety that it was honestly a little bit frightening. 

“Where will we go?” Klaus asked. 

“I was thinking the lake. You know. For old time’s sake. We had fun there, didn’t we?” 

“The lake? But we could go anywhere!” Klaus said. 

She frowned. “We only have tonight. And we have permission to go to the lake, not somewhere else.” 

“Can we have a bonfire?” Diego asked. 

Allison grinned. “Do you even have to ask?” 

“And stay up all night?” Klaus asked. 

“Well, _you_ can stay up all night if you want, but I imagine we’ll all be up pretty late, yeah.” 

“And we can make S’mores?” Ben said, sitting up on the couch. 

“Way ahead of you,” she said. 

“Oh, so that’s all it took to perk you up?” Klaus said. “I thought you were sick.” 

“No, I feel okay now. I can go.” 

“I don’t know, you look a little under the weather, maybe you better stay home...” 

“No way, that’s not fair, come on...” 

“He’s messing with you, Six, of course you’re coming. You all are. Mandatory birthday attendance,” Allison said. 

“Good luck dragging Five out,” Diego muttered. “Seriously, when was the last time he took a break from whatever the hell he’s working on?” 

But whatever Allison had said to Five and Luther, it worked, and they all piled into the car with only a brief scuffle over who would drive, which Allison quickly won, having been the one to get the keys in the first place. Luther sat beside her in the passenger seat, Diego and Klaus behind them. Five, Six, and Seven got in the back, in the usual order. 

Evening was darkening when they arrived at the lake, the brilliant neons of the sunset deepening to richer jewel tones as the sunlight slipped away. Ben did his best to be present in the moment, not to get lost in his head, stuck in a loop monitoring every twitch of the thing under his skin as it nipped and poked at him. This was going to be a good night. It was going to be so good. Nothing was going to mess this up. They were all going to get along, and it would be just like it was when they were kids, and things were simple. 

Things had never been simple. 

Allison got out of the car and stretched, the rest of them following suit. The air was crisp and growing colder as the sun set, a brisk October chill in the air. Ben pulled the sleeves of his hoodie down over his hands, hugging himself. It wasn’t so cold as to be uncomfortable, but the house and the car had been so cozy and warm that the change was abrupt and startling. 

Allison popped the trunk and revealed the bounty of supplies they’d hastily crammed in. She handed Luther the bag of firewood and then unceremoniously thrust a six-pack of beer at Diego. 

“Whoa, what the hell?” he said. 

“Allison, where did you get that?” Luther demanded. 

“Charlotte’s boyfriend’s brother. Look, it’s not a big deal, there’s only enough for one for everyone anyway.” 

“Actually, you’re one short,” Klaus said. 

For a moment she looked uncomfortable and unsure of herself. “I figured at least one person wouldn’t be interested, but if everyone is, then I’ll just have soda.” 

Ben could read between the lines well enough to imagine her line of thinking. She could justify bringing one drink for everybody as ultimately harmless, a cool thing for her to do. But bringing more than that felt like a potential invitation to disaster, when this was supposed to be a calm night, a night to bring them back together, like old times. 

“Well, you thought right. I’m not drinking that, and neither should the rest of you,” Luther said. 

“Fine, can I have yours then?” Klaus said. 

“No,” Allison snapped. “One per person. Don’t make me regret this.” 

Ignoring this argument, Five picked up one of the duffel bags and headed for the cabin, Vanya following suit, picking one up and handing it to Ben while slinging the other over her own shoulder and throwing the bag of marshmallows at him. 

He tore it open and followed her over to the cabin, where Five had already jumped so that he could unlock and open the door from the inside. It was small and sparse and very dusty, but not unclean. There was a bed and a desk with a sturdy wooden chair and a closet with a broom and an old fishing pole. 

So the mystery of the cabin was solved, then. It held no secrets of their father’s past. It had simply come with the property, and he’d never bothered to gut the place. There was no trace of him in the place at all. 

“Good thing we brought all these blankets,” Vanya said, beginning to make a pile of all the bedding they’d stuffed into the trunk, haphazardly, none of them caring to plan how comfortably they’d be sleeping that night. 

Ben sneezed from the dust and talked around a mouth full of sugary marshmallow. “Who do you think used to live here?” 

“How should I know?” she said. “I guess they’re long gone, whoever they were.” 

Darkness was deepening outside, the line of pine trees a darker band of bristling blackness against the rich indigo sky. 

“Give me that,” Allison said, taking the bag of marshmallows. “Don’t eat them all yet, geez.” 

“Sorry,” he said, wincing and stuffing his hands in the pocket of his hoodie. 

“Here,” she said, handing him a plastic-wrapped sandwich. He could tell Mom had made it and packed it for them. She always cut their sandwiches into triangles. “You didn’t even have dinner yet, you’ll make yourself sick.” 

Behind them, Diego tore off his shirt and went tearing down the dock, launching himself into the water with a whoop. 

“Hey, I didn’t know we were going swimming,” Klaus said. “I didn’t bring a change of clothes.” 

“We’re not, it’s freezing—wait, you didn’t bring any other clothes? Why not?” 

“We’re out in nature, what? Don’t judge me.” 

The thing wanted to go plunging into that dark, cold water. It wanted to shed this form for another one. 

But he would not let it. 

He cracked his knuckles, a nervous habit, until he saw Five wincing from the corner of his eye, and made himself stop. 

Diego came running out of the water, picking his shirt off the ground and pulling it back on, shaking his head and sending water streaming from his hair. He shivered. “Hurry up on that fire, I’m freezing!” 

“Well nobody told you to go jump in the lake, dumbass,” said Allison, arranging the wood in the firepit. She had a long candle lighter which she held up to the starter log, a little brick of dark wood in the heart of the nest of firewood, but it would not take. The thing squirmed at the acrid smell, tasting chemicals in the air from the burning wood. Burning plastic, burning hair. They remembered how it felt to be so close to the fire that the heat made their skin steam and blister. Ben held his breath, but it didn’t help. 

“Come on,” Diego pleaded. “Get it started.” 

“It’s okay if you can’t,” Ben said. “We don’t have to have a fire.” 

Diego looked at him, incredulous and offended. “The hell? Of course we do, it’s like, the whole point.” 

“We could siphon gasoline out of the car,” said Klaus. 

“What a great idea,” said Five, his voice perfectly flat. 

“Really?” Klaus asked, surprised. 

“No.” 

“It’s getting there...” she said, though the small flame was struggling to take. 

“We could look around for pinecones,” said Luther. “Those are supposed to burn a long time.” 

“Or we could use this,” Diego said, picking up the can of lighter fluid from one of their bags and shaking it. 

“Or you could just be patient,” Allison said. “There’s an idea.” 

“Here, Six, you do it,” Diego said, handing him the bottle. 

Six took it. “Me?” 

“Don’t,” said Five. 

Diego laughed. “Yeah, just a little.” 

“Do it, do it,” Klaus chanted. 

“Do _not_ —” 

But it was too late for Five’s warning; he was already squeezing the bottle at the small, flickering fire, which was not so small any more, which was arching up along the stream of lighter fluid and now the fire was in his hand and a panic that came from within him but which was not his own, at least not his alone, swallowed him up, and he could hear people screaming, and taste smoke and evil, toxic air, and he was burning. 

He threw the bottle on the ground with a yelp and the tenuous, shaky control he’d maintained all day long buckled and broke, and the thing spasmed, formless and clumsy in its blind panic. Dozens of cartilaginous bumps rose up beneath his skin, his skin which was writhing like it was coming alive, and he had the absurd and horrifying idea that he was about to shed some cocoon and finally emerge as something else entirely. Instinctively he wrapped an arm around his middle, pressing on the tentacle that was trying to emerge from his torso. 

Luther shouted and kicked the burning bottle like he was punting a football, sending it sailing through the air like a small flaming asteroid before it landed deep in the lake and went out. 

“Oh my god!” Allison yelled. 

“Holy shit, holy shit,” said Diego. 

“Are you okay?” Vanya asked, stepping towards him, reaching out. 

He stepped back, almost tripping in his haste. His chest heaved, his body wracked by another spasm, as though it wanted to break open, tear the envelope of skin keeping whatever they were inside hidden. His skin bubbled, thinning in places, forming craters and pockmarks, sockets for the eyes budding up underneath, for the mouths, the appendages he had no name for. He swallowed back bile bringing his hands to his face to cover it, but shrinking back when he touched his own face and found it unfamiliar for a moment, shifting and malleable, not his own. He whimpered and gulped, sucking in quick, shaky breaths and trying and failing to force the thing to recede, to give him back at least his semblance of humanity. He tried very hard not to hear the sound his body made as it broke. 

“Holy shit, okay Six, you’re okay, calm down,” Klaus said. “You’re fine.” 

“Does he look fine to you?” Diego said, his voice going high. 

“Did he get burned? Is he hurt?” Allison asked, and why was she talking as though he wasn’t right there? He was still here, it was still him, why did she sound like that? 

“’M okay,” he said, though his voice came out warped and layered. He flinched. 

“Remember what Dad says, Ben,” said Luther. “You’re in control, not it.” 

“That doesn’t help him,” Vanya snapped. 

“What? Of course it does—what would you know about it?” 

“A lot more than you, at least.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Why don’t you sit down,” Klaus mumbled, having stepped closer slowly, his voice low and soft, as though he were speaking to something wild and rare, something liable to spook and run. “You both got startled, that’s all, you just need a minute, then you’ll calm down.” 

Something about being referred to in the plural made his breath catch and the backs of his eyes burn. He took a deep, shuddering breath, the worst of the thing’s revolt against the confines of their body subsiding as he forced it back with a painful effort which felt like it was doing more harm than good, like he was tearing himself in two, but what else could he do? 

“Let me see your hand,” Allison demanded, holding her own hand out. 

He shrank back. “I’m really fine—it didn’t burn me.” 

“Then let me see.” 

Ben forced a laugh, doing his best to sound lighthearted. “Really, I’m sorry I sc-scared you guys, I promise it’s okay.” 

She grabbed his wrist and he went rigid, eyes wide and staring at her hand wrapped around him as she stared down at his hand. He held his breath and watched her force her expression not to change as the skin under her fingers moved, watched her swallow and let go of him gently. 

“I told you,” he muttered, taking his hand and stuffing it back in his pocket. 

“Why the hell would you do something so stupid?” Vanya said. 

Ben flushed. “Well, I didn’t--I didn’t know that would happen!” 

“And why would you tell him to!” she said, rounding on Diego. 

“Jesus, it was a joke!” 

“And you encouraged him,” Vanya said, glowering at Klaus. 

“Whoa, I thought it was a joke too,” Klaus said, holding up his palms. “How was I supposed to know he’d really do it? He never takes a dare. Besides, I didn’t really think about it, I didn’t know what’d happen.” 

“I didn’t think it was a dare,” Ben said. “It’s not his fault.” 

“You can’t pour lighter fluid on an open flame, Six,” Luther said, looking bewildered and horrified in a way that would have been funny, in another context, if it wasn’t directed at him. “Weren’t you listening in any of our disaster response courses?” 

Klaus scoffed and rolled his eyes. 

“If it wasn’t a dare and you weren’t just being stupid, then why?” Allison said, mystified. “You could’ve really been hurt.” 

“I—I don’t know, I didn’t think about—I thought they were being serious.” 

“If we told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?” Klaus said, grinning goofily, trying to dispel the tension. 

“Of course I didn’t really want you to do that!” Diego said, his eyes wide, and Ben realized it wasn’t anger making them all act in ways he found, honestly, exaggerated—after all, nobody had been hurt—but fear, and a premonition of guilt. They looked spooked. “Why didn’t you think?” 

“I—why would I? You wouldn’t ask me to do something that would hurt me.” 

“Jesus,” Diego hissed, shaking his head. 

“I’m sorry,” Ben said. “I didn’t mean to upset everyone...” 

“It’s not about us being upset,” Diego said, his voice coming out loud and rough. Ben startled, pinned by his brother’s glare. He hadn’t ever been the target of Diego’s anger before, not him alone, not like this. “You’re going to get yourself killed one day, you know that? Can’t you think for yourself?” 

Ben stepped back, eyes going wide and round. “That’s not fair—come on, this was just one mistake, it’s not a big deal like you guys are making it seem...” 

Behind Diego the fire was crackling now, well fed by the butane and snapping at the air. It cast their shadows long and wavering, their figures mutating in the flickering light. 

“But it’s not just one mistake,” Diego said. He scoffed and shook his head, reigning his anger in with visible difficulty. “What’re you going to do, follow him around like a kicked puppy the rest of your life?” he said, jerking his thumb at Luther. 

Ben stared at Diego, stunned speechless and burning with shame and embarrassment and hurt. He didn’t understand. Why was Diego mad at him? He couldn’t think of a time Diego had been angry with him—properly angry, not just annoyed or mad at the world in general. 

Honestly, he’d thought he was too far beneath Two’s notice to be worth getting angry at. 

“What the hell, Diego?” Allison said. “That’s totally out of line.” 

“Is it?” Diego laughed. When had his laugh become so bitter? “Whatever, Three. You may be a world class liar, but you aren’t fooling me—you're thinking the same exact thing.” 

“Guys, don’t you think you’re overreacting a little? I mean, nobody got hurt.” Ben said. 

“Ben, don’t be stupid, it’s not just about this time—and nobody got hurt? Really? You still look like you’re gonna be sick. Hell, I feel like _I’m_ gonna be sick, watching that—I can still see it moving around, you’re not hiding anything.” 

Ben flinched. For a second it seemed like the whole world was quiet, but maybe that was just his perception of things, just the loud rush of blood in his ears drowning everything out. 

“You are being such an absolute dick right now,” Allison said, her voice quiet and resolute. 

“Nobody ever wants to hear the truth around here.” 

“You can tell the truth without being an _asshole.”_

Words crammed themselves up his throat and came tripping out of his mouth. He was powerless to the sudden horrible need to explain, to defend. “But that’s not hurting me—They just got scared, They don’t like fire, They weren’t hurting me. Everything’s fine now, everything’s fine, we don’t have to fight.” 

“I don’t know,” Vanya said, her voice low. “Maybe we should. Get everything out in the open.” 

“Yay,” Klaus said, with half-hearted false cheer. “Sharing secrets, now it’s a real slumber party. I think I’ll have that beer now.” 

He sat down by the fire, cracking open one of the cans and tilting it back, making a show of how long he could drink before coming up for air before staring at all of them, as though waiting for an ovation. He held up another can, waving it in the air. “Come on, join me, don’t make me drink alone. It’s my birthday after all.” 

“It’s never stopped you before,” Luther muttered. 

Klaus did not glare or wince or do any of the things Ben might have expected. Instead, his smile pulled wider, tighter. His face hardened. He looked older then. “That’s right, tell me what you really think.” 

“You don’t get to talk to him like that,” Diego snapped, glaring at Luther. 

“Like what? Honestly? Isn’t that what you want?” 

“Yeah, not your pompous ass judgements about shit you don’t know a goddamn thing about.” 

Allison sat down next to Klaus, knees drawn up, elbows propped on her knees, face in her hands. “I should have known this was going to be a disaster. One nice thing, I thought—can't we have one good night? But no. Not in this family.” 

“Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad if you weren’t so eager to _leave_ this family,” Luther said. 

And then a silence really did descend for a moment, like the fire had burned up all the air, and the only sound was its crackling as it devoured the wood. 

Ben fisted his hands in the front of his hoodie, looking between One and Three as they stared each other down while Diego scowled and crossed his arms. Five pinched the bridge of his nose, sighed, and sat primly on the ground beside Allison, Vanya crossing her legs beside them. Ben sat down slowly next to her. If he moved slowly, quietly, if he made himself small, if he was very good, then maybe— 

But even he knew that wasn’t going to work anymore. It hadn’t worked for a while now. 

Maybe it never had. 

“Fine,” Allison said, her voice flat and low. “You want to do this now? You think you’re ready to be a big boy, One, and talk about this?” 

“What is there to talk about? You’re leaving us. End of story.” 

“Is it? What about the part where you decide to stay and be like some pawn in Dad’s fantasy for the rest of your life?” 

Luther squared his shoulders. “I’m not ashamed of who I am. And you shouldn’t be either. 

Allison laughed. “You think this is about shame? I’m not leaving because I’m ashamed, Luther.” 

She wasn’t? She said that like it should be obvious, but he realized he couldn’t say the same. Of course he was ashamed. They called him the Horror in the papers, like it was his name. The six of them went around acting like judge and jury (not yet executioner—but was he just lying to himself if he said that day would never come?) as if their powers gave them the right to carry out whatever Hargreeves wanted done. 

Was it wrong, to be ashamed? It wasn’t the only reason he thought of leaving—but it was there. But then, wasn’t there shame in leaving, too? Leaving Luther, leaving the life they’d built, the only one he’d ever known, the one where at least he had a purpose, had a place he almost sort of fit in? 

There was no escaping shame. It followed him around every corner. 

“I’m also leaving, Luther,” Vanya said, and they all quieted. “I’ve prepared applications to several schools already.” 

“Well...well good for you, Vanya,” Luther said. “I hope you get in. I’m sure you will.” 

“What? Not going to tell me what a disappointment I am, for leaving my family?” 

“It’s...it’s different, Vanya.” 

“I get it,” Vanya said, her mouth twisting in a humorless smile. She ducked her head, hair falling across her face. Ben thought she knew something about shame, too. “That’s what I thought you’d say. You don’t care if I leave. Why would you? You’re not losing anything important. What’s one less sibling? You don’t want siblings. You want...soldiers, I guess. Something more useful. I’ve never been that.” 

“That’s not true,” Luther said. “Look, I’m happy for you, Vanya. But don’t twist this around.” 

“I think she’s right,” said Diego. “You don’t want us to stay because we’re family. You want us to stay because there’s no glory in being Number One if you’re the only one around.” 

“And you’ve got to act out because you can’t stand the thought of always coming in second,” said Luther. “But somebody’s got to. If you could set aside your ego for one second, maybe you’d get that it’s not about you, or any of us, and it never has been. It’s about the mission.” 

“Bullshit!” Diego laughed. “It’s always been about you! About all of us! But I hate this hero shit. We don’t deserve praise. Not for what we are here, doing what he tells us.” 

“You’ve always thought you know better than Dad, but what do you know about anything? What are you going to do out there that’s so great?” 

“I don’t know, but whatever it is, it sure as hell beats this.” 

“Guys,” Ben said, his voice coming out thin and meek. “Can’t we talk about this without picking sides and acting like somebody’s wrong, and somebody’s right, and try and listen to each other...” 

“Oh, but Ben, don’t you know we can’t do anything without there being winners and losers?” Klaus said. “It’s almost like we’re all severely lacking in communication skills, I wonder why that could be...” 

“I guess you’re leaving too then, huh? You’re just going to take off?” Luther said, rounding on Klaus. 

Klaus grinned up at him, shrugged. “It’s really nothing personal, One. Honest. It’s just, you know, I don’t know how much longer I can stand the damn _uniforms.”_

“This isn’t a joke,” Luther said. He shook his head. “I just don’t know why you’re so determined to waste yourself.” 

Klaus made a mock pout. “Well, we can’t all be Number One, oh illustrious leader.” 

“I need you to be serious for five seconds—can you even do that? I just want to know why—” 

“Why? Why what? What is so goddamn mysterious, Luther? Like, what part about our lives being a shitshow run by an egomaniac who didn’t even bother to _name_ us is not getting through? Hello? Wake up! How much longer are you going to keep waiting for him to pat you on the back and tell you he _really does love you, son,”_ Klaus said, and the comical deep voice was frighteningly at odds with his almost desperate tone of voice. “It’s never going to happen, and you know what? I don’t need it to. It’s fine. There’s a whole world out there for me to go and be a total waste of space in. I can do that anywhere. I don’t need to stay to disappoint an old man who was never going to be—never going to—who never gave two shits about me in the first place.” 

“That’s not true, Klaus,” said Luther, his voice quieter. It was his reasonable voice, the one which could either calm you or be oh so infuriatingly condescending. Ben knew, having been on the receiving end of it enough times himself. “Dad does care.” 

“Stop,” Klaus said, his voice shaking. He laughed, as if that would cover it up, but it only made more obvious his distress. “You don’t get to—you don’t get to say that to me.” 

“But he does.” 

“Then fuck being cared about. If that’s what it looks like, nobody better ever fucking care about me again!” His voice hung in the air for a second, shocking them all into silence. He laughed again, a breathy sound. He tugged at his collar, grinning. “Oh boy, you really got me worked up for a second there. Was that serious enough for you? How’d I do?” 

“Shit, man,” Diego said, finally ceasing his pacing and collapsing on the ground by the fire beside Klaus. “We are so fucked.” 

“You guys have got to try and see the bigger picture here,” Luther said. “We have a purpose. All of this hasn’t been for nothing.” 

“You’re scared,” Allison said. “You’re afraid to leave. I get it. But I’m more afraid to stay.” 

“I’m not scared,” Luther scoffed. “What kind of life would I possibly want out there? Some, some desk job? Some ordinary life? That’s all well and good, if you were born into it—but I can’t do that. Why would I ever give up what we have to go and pretend to be ordinary? I’m not saying it’s an easy life—I'm not saying there aren’t demands, aren’t sacrifices, aren’t risks—but what else could possibly be more important? We were born for this.” 

“You weren’t born _for_ anything,” Klaus said, sounding tired. “Don’t act like this is fate or something. It’s Dad’s idea, he made it all up. You weren’t born for it.” 

“What about you? You haven’t said anything,” Luther said, looking at Five. 

Five sighed. “I have no reason to stay. It would be holding myself back.” 

“You’ve never wanted to be part of a team,” Luther said, a little bit of his personal resentment towards Five leaking through. “From day one you’ve wanted to do your own thing, have it your own way.” 

Five looked up at him like he was only a half-interesting specimen under a microscope. “And?” 

“And—and I just can’t believe how selfish you’re all being!” 

“And I can’t believe what a complete jerk you’ve been ever since I told you my plans. I guess we’ll both just have to be disappointed,” Allison said. 

“Am I the only one who gets this?” Luther said, sounding honestly baffled. Then his eyes fell on Ben, and Ben’s stomach dropped. “Ben—Ben, you’re staying, too. Tell them. They’ve all decided I’m against them, but they’ll listen to you.” 

Ben’s eyes went wide. “I...I...please don’t drag me into this, I don’t want to fight.” 

Allison laughed, a cruel sound that failed to hide her hurt. “That’s what you think? You just assume he’s going to stay?” 

“I don’t have to assume, he told me.” 

“Oh, don’t make things up, Luther. Face it. You just take for granted that he’ll go along with whatever you and Dad are doing. Well, not anymore.” 

“What are you talking about?” 

“Tell him, Ben,” she said, staring at him, triumphant and vengeful. 

Ben gulped. “I...I think everyone’s a little worked up right now, can’t we talk about this another time...you know, when we’re all calm?” 

“He’s staying,” Luther said, the naked certainty in his voice doing something painful to Ben’s heart. “I’m not taking anything for granted, he _told me_ he’s staying.” 

Allison was quiet just long enough for Ben to know she was about to ruin everything. Luther was many things, but an outright liar wasn’t one of them. He wouldn’t make something like that up and push it as the truth unless he believed it, or at least, thought he had good reason to. 

“Well, that’s funny,” she said. “Because he told me that he’s leaving.” 

And now everyone was staring, and he could feel the ropy forms of the thing’s tentacles coiling and stretching under his skin like ropes binding him to this body, and really, this was all his fault. 

“I don’t believe you,” said Luther. Again with that fatal certainty like a nail being driven right into Six’s chest. 

“Ben?” Allison said. “Care to clear this up?” 

Ben looked around, but none of the others wanted to meet his gaze. He was on his own. 

“I...I’m sorry.” 

Luther was staring at him with something like amazement. It was the simple, fair look of one who, having never doubted himself or been made to feel inferior, had never imagined he might in any way be deceived. 

“No. But you told me you were staying,” Luther said. “You promised.” 

“Well, he lied to you,” Allison said. “Oh come on, of course he did! He knew how you’d react! You’d try to talk him out of it, and you just might be able to, so how could he tell you? But we’ve been talking about leaving all year.” 

“No, wait,” Ben said, staring at his brother, desperate to wipe that look off his face and put back the old one, the look of unshakeable faith, the one that told him Luther considered him one of life’s few steady constants. “I didn’t lie, I didn’t lie to you, Luther, I—” 

“Then what do you call this?” Luther said, a barely suppressed quiver of emotion in his voice. He took a second to gather himself, forcing a note of iron into his voice, like he did on missions. “Out of all of them, I never expected this from you.” 

Ben had to clamp his mouth shut to stifle a broken, pathetic sound of protest. The thing shivered under their skin with a nauseating sliding sensation, like his skin were turning to a liquid it was swimming through. 

“You promised me, too,” said Allison. “All those conversations we’ve had, all the preparation...I don’t believe that was all fake. You don’t have that in you.” 

“Just tell the truth, Ben,” Luther said. “Has she been pressuring you? You can tell me. It’s okay.” 

“Really? That’s how you want to play this?” Allison said. “You think I’m _pressuring_ him into leaving? That’s rich. Despite what you apparently think of me, _I’m_ not the one who’s being manipulative. But don’t take it from me, ask Six.” 

“Please, guys, I—I wasn’t trying to lie to anybody, I just—we don’t have to fight about this, we’re all on the same side, we all just want—want to do the right thing.” 

“But you can’t have it both ways,” Allison said, her voice steely. “You have to choose, Ben.” 

“But why?” he said. “You guys make it seem like—like I’m choosing between the two of you, and that’s not what this should be about.” 

“Making a decision means accepting a loss,” Luther said, and the phrase tickled something at the back of Ben’s mind—some memory from training, some old script Hargreeves handed down, and he had the frightening vision suddenly of his brother as their father’s mouthpiece, a puppet with a voice box Hargreeves spoke through. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t fair to Luther, he was his own person. And yet, the image was there. 

“But it doesn’t have to be like this,” he said, hating the timid pleading note in his voice but unable to do anything about it. “You guys are making it this way, and it doesn’t have to be. Look, Dad talked to me the other day. He said—he said going away, it doesn’t have to mean leaving the Academy, not all the way, at least, not for good—he said—he told me—it doesn’t have to be...we don’t really have to choose, he said as long as we still...with certain conditions...” 

The explanation sounded woefully pathetic, when he said it out loud. And when he tried to remember where the sense of comfort had come from, following his talk with their father, he could not for the life of him recall what had reassured him. And he saw that the whole conversation was hollow—everything he’d desperately wanted to hear, that he didn’t have to choose, promises hanging on dust and air without any solid ground beneath, and he’d fallen for it. He was still under its spell. Why shouldn’t it be just as their father had said? What other way could it be? 

“Do you really believe that?” Diego said, his voice low and dark. Almost disgusted. “If you believed that for a second, you’re just fooling yourself. The old man’s playing you like a fiddle, just like he always has, and now you’re just letting him do it.” 

“But...but why can’t it be true?” 

“Because the world’s not sunshine and freaking rainbows, and everybody can’t get along and be happy all the time just because you say so.” 

“I know that,” Ben said, irritation making his voice sharper than he intended. He knew he did his best to be easygoing and upbeat, but did they really think that meant he was stupid? “But what’s wrong with trying to find another way, where we can all agree? Would it really be the end of the world if we were all happy? Of course I know everything’s not like that all the time, but—but maybe if you guys would try it too, it wouldn’t seem so impossible. Maybe we don’t really have to choose.” 

Diego just shook his head and scowled. Allison’s voice, when she spoke, was cloyingly soft and sympathetic, like she was soothing an upset child. “There’s nothing wrong with that at all, Ben, it’s...it’s really sweet, and I don’t think any of us would want you to stop seeing things that way, but...but wishing and hoping for things to be different isn’t going to make things change.” 

“I know that,” he said, pitiful and defeated. “I know that.” 

“If you’re going to leave, you have to leave all the way,” Klaus said. “Otherwise you’re going to wind up an experiment for the rest of your life. You can’t take a single thing from him, or he’ll be running your life forever.” 

Ben winced, and Luther said, “We aren’t experiments.” 

“That might be easy for you to say,” Klaus snapped. “But that’s what we are to him. Even you.” 

“Ben, do you really believe all this stuff? You really think life is so horrible here you’re just going to—what? Leave, and do what?” 

“He’s going to go to college,” Allison said. “He’s going to get to actually grow up and do what he wants and make his _own decisions,_ Luther.” 

Luther laughed, a sound of honest incredulity. “Do you really not see how selfish you’re being? How cruel?” 

“What do you mean, cruel? I’m not the one—” 

“Maybe you can just walk away from this, Allison, and pretend to be normal, but it’s just plain wrong that you’ve gone and confused him and told him he can do that, too, just to, what, prove a point? Prove to yourself you’re making the right choice, because you’ve gotten everybody else behind you with some lie about this other life waiting for them out there?” 

“There _is_ another life. Just because you can’t see that doesn’t mean—” 

“I guess for you, maybe that really is true, if all of this means nothing to you—but _look_ at him, Allison, what the hell do you think is going to happen? You think the world is just going to let somebody called the Horror go out there and pretend he’s just like them and everybody’s just going to play along, because they’re all so nice and, and accepting? How the hell do you picture this going down, because all I see is—is a disaster waiting to happen. He’s going to get hurt and it’s going to be your fault, because you’ve sold him this fantasy! Maybe you don’t like it, but you belong here, and this is the only place that’s ever going to be true, for any of us, even if some of you might be able to trick the world into thinking otherwise.” 

Ben inhaled sharply as though he’d been struck. And he knew that Luther had spoken aloud the very truth that had lain at the bottom of his heart, even as he’d been pouring over college prep books with Allison and dreaming of decorating an apartment with Klaus, making travel plans with Vanya and Five. He had known it all along. 

It had been a nice dream. But it was only that, a dream. And he had to wake up sometime. 

Allison’s face was a cold mask. “How can you say that? You have no right—” 

_“I_ have no right? I’m the only one trying to look out for somebody other than myself.” 

“Just because you feel trapped here, doesn’t mean you get to try and make us feel the same!” 

“I’m not trapped, I—” 

“He’s right,” Ben said, his voice trembling. So was the rest of him, come to think of it. All the way down to the thing, twisting and braiding itself beneath his skin. “What was I thinking?” he said, in a quiet, horrified voice barely above a whisper. He stared at the fire, unwilling to look at any of them. “I can’t--I can’t go out there, I can’t--Dad tried to warn me, he told me—but I wanted to believe you, when you said that I could—how could I be so stupid?” 

“You aren’t stupid,” Klaus said. “This is how Dad wants us to feel. Helpless. Dependent. So we think there’s not any other choice. But there is. Don’t let him take that.” 

Ben wrapped his arms tight around himself, staring at the fire, his eyes burning. “At least here maybe we’ll be—be good for something. At least we can be, can be useful, at least—but out there we’re just—just going to be freaks.” 

“Don’t say that,” said Allison. 

“So what?” said Klaus. “Who gives a shit? Everybody thinks that anyway, even Hargreeves, so what do we have to lose? You can’t let that stop you from living your life.” 

“Are you happy now?” Allison said, fixing her furious gaze on Luther. “Happy now that you’ve made everybody feel like shit, done your best to crush every little scrap of belief that things could be better? Is that what you want? Beat us down until we really think the only way forward is Dad’s way?” 

“No,” Luther said, glancing at Ben and then away, his face hard and stoic. “I’m not. But that doesn’t matter. It’s never been about being happy.” 

“Okay, Luther,” she said, her voice flat. “Then you win, I guess. Congratulations. Nobody’s happy.” 

She stood, brushing off her jeans, and then turned and walked into the cabin, shutting the door behind her. Luther stared at the shut door for a moment, before squaring his jaw and turning and walking off along the shore, into the darkness. Instinctively, Ben made to stand, but Vanya grabbed his sleeve and held him down. 

“Don’t,” she said. 

“But shouldn’t we—we can’t just—” 

“Give them space,” she said. “You’ll just make it worse.” 

Diego stood with a derisive sigh. “Well. Happy fucking birthday, everybody,” he said, before stalking off in the opposite direction as Luther, kicking stones into the lake as he went. Long after he’d faded out of sight, they could hear the rocks skipping and splashing far out on the dark water. 

“I’m sorry,” Ben said miserably, rocking slightly back and forth in place, without realizing he was doing it, as if in some unconscious effort to soothe either himself or the Horror which was still roiling in his stomach like a bowl of worms. “This is all my fault.” 

Klaus scoffed. “Save some blame for the rest of us, will you? It isn’t your fault—this is all to do with their egos. And, oh yeah, our totally fucked childhood.” 

“Lest we forget,” said Five, which startled a laugh out of Ben. 

He sniffed and wiped his eyes on the ends of his sleeves. “I don’t know what I’d do without you guys,” he confessed, not caring if he made himself ridiculous with sentimentality. He never had. “If...if everyone could agree, to stay or go, then—then it wouldn’t be hard at all, knowing what to do. I just don’t know why we have to be so...” 

“But you can’t control how other people are going to feel and react,” Vanya said. “That’s why you have to make this decision yourself.” 

“But I don’t...I don’t understand that,” he said. “How can you make a decision based on yourself, when it’s going to affect so many other people?” 

He’d never once made a decision based purely on himself, and he didn’t think anyone else did, either. There had always been six other siblings to consider, and Father. There had always been the thing. 

“I don’t know, Ben. All I know is you can’t please everybody. Sometimes you can’t please anybody. You’ll just make yourself miserable trying,” she said. 

And, well. He couldn’t argue with that. He knew she of all people knew well what a tiresome waste it was, trying to earn the slightest inkling of approval that never came. 

“About what One said,” Vanya murmured, and really, were they completely sure she didn’t have a supernatural power? Because she sure did seem to read his mind sometimes. 

Or maybe always being the quiet one on the sidelines had made her a heck of a lot more observant than the rest of them. 

“I really hope none of you take that to heart,” she said, having the tact not to single him out, although the way her gaze flicked to his let him know he was the one her words were most directed towards. “What does he know about life outside the Academy? Not any more than we do. Who’s he to say how things will go when we leave?” 

“He can be such a prick,” Klaus blurted, ripping up grass and tossing it into the fire. 

“He’s going through the same things we are,” Ben said, unsure why he bothered, the words coming out like a mechanical impulse, an instinct to defend and smooth things over that had become so ingrained it no longer felt like a choice. “I think he’s really trying to look out for us, he’s just...doesn’t always knows the best way to do that.” 

“I don’t think he knows how to do that at all,” Klaus said. Perhaps sensing that they could go back and forth on the subject of Luther all night without moving an inch, Ben now unwilling to say a word against his brother with the guilt of having betrayed him weighing down so heavily, Klaus changed gears, looking at Five. “What about you, Five? You’ve been quiet.” 

Five shrugged, firelight flickering in his eyes. “What is there to say? I’ve made up my mind. Soon all of this will be behind us, one way or another. As much as anything is ever really behind us,” he added, like an afterthought he hadn’t meant to speak out loud, a strange little smile flickering on his face for a second, like a new nervous tic that had cropped up somehow without Ben noticing. 

“Cryptic, yet true,” said Klaus. “I’ll take it.” 

They were quiet for a while, watching the formless body of flames flicker and mutate, listening to the insects buzz and the wood crackle in the fire and the water lapping the shore. 

“Well, I’m still having my S’mores,” said Klaus, rummaging through one of the bags for the pokers, the bars of chocolate and box of graham crackers. “Let those guys miss out, I think we’re entitled to compensation. For the emotional suffering caused by witnessing such flagrant jackassery as we’ve seen tonight.” 

Ben laughed and even Vanya cracked a grin. And that was how the other three found them, when Diego and Luther came back out of the darkness, and Allison stepped outside, staring at their sticky, chocolate-smeared faces and hands with fond exasperation. Klaus waved his poker at them, marshmallow engulfed in flames at the end of it. 

“Welcome back, assholes,” he said. 

Wordlessly, they all seemed to agree to drop all conversation for the night. Despite the truce, the atmosphere remained tense and brittle, like something about to shatter. Their jokes held dark undercurrents. They had to skim along the surface of things, voicing only small thoughts, while the big things lurked among them, unsaid but a physical presence breathing down their necks. 

Still, later on he would look back at the memory of all of them around the campfire with longing. It was their birthday, and they were all together. They must have been happy. 

Nostalgia was a crafty beast. Sometimes he had the will to weed it out and see clearly. Other times he preferred to be hoodwinked and see the past through a gauzy golden film, all of them happy and surrounded by light, whole and unharmed, and because they were so in memory, they would be forever. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things must get worse before they can get better...this hurt me to write.  
> This chapter was actually a PSA about not pouring lighter fluid on an open flame in disguise. Not that any of you intelligent people needed to hear that...


	12. Origin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mothers, monsters, musings on certain aspects of the horror genre. Variations on a theme.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, dear reader. So, fun fact, this was never supposed to be chapter twelve--I started editing my chapter twelve draft, and somehow that turned into writing this. Not sure of how much interest it will be to any of you, but I enjoyed myself with this one. I have...thoughts, I guess?
> 
> At some point I described this story as the monster bildungsroman of my teenage dreams, and you know, I think that's probably the appropriate genre description.
> 
> Contains vague spoilers for the story The Dunwhich Horror and the film Rosemary's Baby.
> 
> Thank you guys so much for reading. <3

“You nearly drove your nanny mad once, you know.” 

He tried to dismiss the idea. His father had tossed it out offhandedly, like it was a casual bit of trivia. There was no thread to pull here, no clues to follow. He had to accept he would never know what those words really meant. He could almost accept that. It had been almost three years since he’d heard those words. He only thought about them, oh, say once or twice a day. 

Whatever he was, he thought the only person he could ask who might be able to answer could be that nanny. But he would never find her, and even if he could, he didn’t want to be cruel enough to ask. 

He almost never thought about his mother. He built a wall in his head, to protect himself from the idea of her. Perhaps there was no woman at all—maybe he’d simply fallen from the sky or crawled out of some hole in the ground. 

That felt better, didn’t it? 

As a rule, he didn’t seek out what the press said about them, but he couldn’t help but absorb whatever news the others got their hands on, in magazines and papers and TV snippets. There were patterns to the ways in which they were talked about, cycles that repeated, as if they were new ideas and not recycled speculation from years ago. There was a certain set of vocabulary used around them, words that stuck to them. There were certain words that followed mentions of himself, and one of those words was eldritch, and one was abomination. He knew what the latter word meant, or at least its connotations, so it stuck to him, and he couldn’t forget it. Because he didn’t know the meaning of the former, it slid right off, and for a long time he didn’t wonder about it at all. Because of the words it was next to, he could take a guess at its meaning well enough. He preferred not to guess. 

The word kept finding him, though. 

Here was the empty sitting room; here was an abandoned paperback from the public library, left on the sill in the corner where he knew Vanya liked to read. She must have left it behind. Having already finished his allotted “extracurricular” reading for the week, Ben settled into Vanya’s reading corner and decided to see what world she was currently inhabiting between the pages. She hadn’t traded with him mid-week at their usual time—had said she didn’t think he’d be interested in the books she was reading, and besides, she wasn’t done with them yet. 

She was fifteen and keen on horror. The book seemed in keeping with that interest—red text on black background, sketchy black and white drawing of what he took to be a man, though the artist’s intention may have been to depict something else entirely. _The_ _Dunwich_ _Horror and Others_ , it read, _the best of H.P. Lovecraft_. 

Later, he would think of it as their first formal meeting, though he’d come to feel he’d been dogged by the legacy of the man’s work all his life, long before he’d ever heard his name. 

He flipped to the title story and muddled through the dense, antiquated prose and the uncomfortable feeling that the voice of the narrator gave him, with all his strict demarcation of us-and-them, only because he knew that Vanya had read these words before him, and he was curious to go where she had gone. So he read about the bleak township of Dunwich and the horrible people who lived there, including those Whateleys, who’d always been off, hadn’t they? 

Here lay the body of Wilbur Whateley, who’d been almost human in life, and who in death gave himself away completely, nothing human but that semblance of eyes and hands, otherwise only a mockery thereof, a terrible farce, only made more horrifying for its bare likeness to humanity, melting on the floor in a puddle of green not-blood and tentacles and half-formed appendages. Here was the Dunwich Horror itself, rising from the barn where it had been raised, the secret Whateley brother, if brother it could be called—a terrible chimera who came forth like a clap of thunder, part “octopus, centipede, spider,” with the half-formed false face of a man and a voice that made the onlookers quake with terror and feel themselves teeter on the brink, gripping the knife’s edge of their sanity, even as all it did was cry out for its father. 

Here was that word again: “Night would soon fall, and it was then that the mountainous blasphemy lumbered upon its eldritch course.” 

What to make of all this, then? 

The word was an adjective meaning, according to Merriam-Webster, “strange or unnatural especially in a way that inspires fear.” 

That was a bit vague, wasn’t it? Can we go further? 

In the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, the early meaning of the word was given as “Belonging to, or resembling, the elves or similar beings,” and “Connected with, proceeding from, suggestive of, elves or supernatural beings; weird, strange, uncanny.” 

Well. That was a bit more detailed, but it certainly didn’t clear things up, now did it? What else? 

The Oxford English Dictionary tentatively derived the word from the Old English ælf-rīce, a collection of syllables he could not guess the pronunciation of, but which apparently meant “elf” and then “dominion, sphere of influence.” Okay. That was...was that anything? 

The Internet agreed that the etymology was uncertain. Well, at this point, he at least knew that much. Uncertainty seemed to be something of a motif here. 

There was a researcher and professor of Old and Medieval English by the name of Martin Puhvel who had the audacity to suggest that the word was derived not from the aforementioned ælf-rīce at all, but rather from æl-rīce, or rather, “foreign, strange; from elsewhere.” That put the meaning somewhere in the ballpark of “other world,” or “otherworldly.” 

There. It felt good to have that whole business squared away, now didn’t it? Now he could turn his mind to better, more relevant questions. Enough with linguistic trivia and identity crises—now onto more serious matters. 

Right. 

The scariest thing about the Dunwhich Horror, so the story goes, was that it spoke English. 

He brought the book to dinner because he hadn’t finished the story yet, and he had decided he had to at least finish what he started, even if he didn’t intend to read the rest. When Klaus saw what he was reading, he got a funny gleam in his eye and gave an incredulous laugh. “What’s that, looking for your cameo?” 

“You’ve read this before?” Ben asked, surprised. 

“Well, no, but he’s famous, isn’t he? All those scary monster stories.” 

“Oh. I didn’t know that.” 

“Hey,” Vanya said, peering at the cover from across the table. “Where’d you get that?” 

“Sorry. I saw you left it in the library. You can have it back, I’m almost done.” 

“That’s okay,” she said, pulling a face. “You can keep it.” 

“You didn’t like it?” 

She shook her head, looking down and fiddling with her napkin. “I wasn’t even going to give it to you. I didn’t think you’d like it, either.” 

She was right. He finished reading the story anyway. 

There, you learned the first word. Now put them both together, and what do you get... 

According to various trope-aggregating websites, an eldritch abomination was a thing defined by its inability to be defined—the ultimate capital-O Other, something so alien it could break the mind just to behold it. Belonging broadly to a genre known as Cosmic Horror which owed its inception to that same terrified bigot who created the Dunwich Horror, the eldritch abomination was a thing which defied reason and all known laws of nature, a thing that could not be understood or assimilated or categorized or reasoned with. It could look like anything, but whatever it looked like would somehow be off, wrong, all wrong, even if only in a nameless way that made the skin crawl. Its motives were beyond human comprehension, so inconceivable that it could hardly be said to have motives in the human sense of the word at all. 

That was almost comforting. He couldn’t be that. He was far too simple, and he knew just what he wanted, as well as anyone did. The Horror couldn’t be that, either, or it would have destroyed them all a long time ago just by existing in close proximity, wouldn’t it have? 

Or maybe he should stop trying to apply genre trope definitions to the real world, as if the hundreds of fictions he wrapped around himself could ever help him peel back the veil on the real thing. As if he could ever make a door or a key or a mirror out of stories. And anyway, maybe these images and words and tropes and ideas were all bankrupt from the start—maybe nothing true could be gleaned from all this rubbish, maybe it ought not to be repurposed, perhaps it should be allowed to become obsolete, because the Other for Lovecraft did not come from so far away as beyond the stars, not at all, and there was nothing new to be learned here.

 _You nearly drove your nanny mad once, you know._

Why had he said that? As if it were nothing. Was it some kind of test, some sort of mind game? What? A joke? 

The thought almost made him shiver. Had he ever seen their father laugh? 

Sometimes he looked at the man and got a chill. 

There was a movie adaptation of _The_ _Dunwich_ _Horror_. The movie poster showed a thin blond woman lying on her back, her face a mask of unconvincing horror, one arm stretched outwards as if grasping for help, the other held in front of her, perhaps to ward off the grotesque face looming over her body, with its profusion of serpentine appendages. That must be Lavinia Whateley, then, though he’d imagined her in no such posture while reading the story, in which she was an isolated albino woman who wandered in the wilderness and never went to school and was not at all pretty and was full of arcane knowledge and bore two twins by the being Yog-Sothoth, whatever that was. Where had this poster picture come from? Certainly not the same story he had read. 

He only looked at the poster, didn’t watch the movie, had no interest in seeing it all play out. Even looking at that picture alone filled him with a nameless, placeless shame so intense it made him feel sick to his stomach. There was nothing to do with such shame except try to bury it. Once you had seen something, you could not unsee it. He didn’t want certain images in his head. 

Of course, you don’t always have a choice as to what images wind up in your head. 

“Do you think we look like our mothers?” 

He wasn’t surprised to hear Allison ask the question—he thought she might even have asked this one before, in other words. The subject of mothers was one that came up every now and then, always offhanded, like it didn’t much matter. 

She was brushing Vanya’s hair, which flowed like dark water down her back, liquid smooth and shining under the caress of the boar bristle brush. This was before she cut it all off. Ben sat in the armchair reading, while the girls sat on Allison’s bed, and when he looked up, there were all three of them, framed in the mirror—Vanya sitting very stiff and still as if the moment might evaporate if she called attention to herself, Allison with her careful hands brushing out Vanya’s long hair, himself hunched in the chair with his eyes looking spooked, as if he’d beheld some unexpected strangers in the mirror, and not themselves. 

“Don’t you think so?” Vanya said. 

“I don’t know,” Allison said. “I mean...are they really our mothers?” 

“We all look different from each other,” Vanya said. “It only makes sense that’s because we look like them. Our mothers, I mean.” 

“But where did the other part come from, then?” Allison asked. “No one just has one parent.” 

Vanya shrugged. “Maybe we do.” 

“I tried to ask Dad once,” Allison said, her voice faltering now, the nonchalance not quite convincing. “But he told me it didn’t matter, and that he didn’t even remember. But he must. How could he not remember?” 

Where _did_ the other part come from? 

It was a good question. He was almost certain he didn’t want the answer. 

Did the Horror have a mother? But it couldn’t have completely separate parentage from his own, could it, or how had they gotten stuck—conjoined—put together like this? But it couldn’t be any other way—he was thinking about this all wrong, he was confusing himself, he was thinking wrong thoughts. This was precisely why their father told him to be careful about maintaining the boundary between himself and Them, about control—he couldn’t have things bleeding together like this, or his thoughts started to get tangled. He had a portal in his body, and that was that. Get it? Simple enough. A confluence where two rivers ran together and made a new, separate, third body of water in the wake of their convergence. See? Simple. No, wait—that was letting things get too tangled again, he was mixing his metaphors. Start over, scrap everything, keep trying.

One of these days, he’d find the right words. Once he had them, he’d have them forever and could stop looking. The right words would act like a cage or a skeleton, and hold him in place, keep him in the right shape. He just had to find them. 

They were fourteen when they got their hands on _Rosemary’s Baby_ for Halloween night. Years later he would remember next to nothing about the movie, which had been very long, and in his experience somewhat dragging. He hadn’t liked having to sit with his dread for so long. And then, of course, there was the ending. Even many years later, he could still recall the exact second when the change came over Rosemary’s face—when having caught sight of her baby, she drew back, hand to her mouth, her eyes going wide, and that terrible jarring music began to play, that dizzy, sick brass. He could still remember the cold wash of horror that had burst open inside him at the sight of her face, of her horror. _What have you done to it? What have you done to its eyes? He has his father’s eyes._ They never showed you what the baby looked like, but they didn’t have to. They showed you Rosemary’s face instead. 

The movie lost him for a moment then, with all that screaming and yelling, all those “Hail Satans,” but it caught him up again with a new kind of horror, the horror which made up half of awe, along with wonder, when she went to the crib a second time and began to rock it, to soothe the crying baby, to look at the baby with that new horror now, with her awe. _Y_ _ou’re trying to get me to be his mother. Aren’t you his mother?_ And her eyes said yes. 

Sometimes he caught himself pressing at his skin, peering too closely, as if searching for a loose seam, a thread he might tug which might help him finally fix whatever was wrong with him that made this body feel like an ill-tailored suit, something he might one day finally shed and find himself far more comfortable without. 

All of this, to say—no, he did not like to think about the woman who had given him away. Before he really knew what prayer was, sometimes at night he used to think very hard at her, trying to vent some of that great choking gulf of shame and guilt that lived inside him. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._ He wanted her to know that he understood her completely, that he did not forgive her because there was nothing at all that needed forgiveness, that most of all he was just so very sorry. 

What if he saw her on the street one day? Would he know it was her? Would she recognize him somehow? 

He should stay here, right here in the house, where it was safe. Where he was safe from her. Out there in the world of mothers, he felt he’d somehow have to reckon with the fact of her, that she lived and breathed in this same world, that she presumably had continued to live a whole life after they parted ways. 

It was difficult to accept that she held no answers. If he wanted to find out just who and what he was, the stories had all taught him that the thing to do would probably be to go on a quest to find where he had come from. But he had never been where he had come from. There was no such place. There was only this house, these halls, these rooms. If he came from anywhere, this had to be the place. So where were his answers? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Etymological information swiped from [this online tidbit of Dr. Alaric Hall's article.](https://www.alarichall.org.uk/EldritchEtymology.pdf) This word annoys me a lot. Sometimes it's nice to be annoyed at things of absolutely no consequence. I hope you all enjoyed your vocabulary lesson disguised as a fic.
> 
> Also: please do let me know if you have thoughts on the title change? I'm not yet terribly attached to this one.
> 
> Take care!


	13. Exchange

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Five is the real eldritch horror all along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, dear readers! May I just say it's so much fun to be sharing this story with you? Because it is. <3
> 
> Editing this one was...a bit of a doozy, because I wrote it months ago, and reading it now made me realize what a very different headspace I'm in now than I was then...the change has been for the better though, I would say.
> 
> Alllll that being said, tw in this chapter for intrusive thoughts (not quite suicidal ideation, but tread carefully if depictions of that could trigger you as well). I don't think this is the first time this has come up in this story, but something about this chapter just made me want to put that up front! As much as this is very much a silly story about fictional characters, I know I'm processing some things here, and it's possible some of that is more apparent than I'm aware of...if anyone thinks there are tags I should add, please feel free to offer me that feedback.
> 
> Anyway! So many more chapters I can't wait to share with you guys! As always, thank you for reading. <3

It was around their seventeenth birthday that he began to think— _ I could make it look like an accident. _

It was not an active desire. Just a thought that snuck up on him from time to time. Standing on the street, watching the traffic, it came to him, and on days when the Horror seemed like They wanted to find a loose thread and unravel him like a poorly sewn blanket, and on missions when he increasingly begged not to have to let Them out, because it hurt, because They were so angry, and so hungry— _ I could make it look like an accident. _

That the Horror’s presence was becoming increasingly  burdensome was not solely to blame for the increased unwanted thoughts, but it was easiest to blame Them, so he did, even as some part of him knew it was dishonest.

When he lay down at night it took him hours to fall asleep. He lay there feeling his heart pound and stutter, waiting for it to burst or simply stop, terrified but also somehow numb, resigned, almost wishing the horrible thing would happen already, and get it all over with. He was plagued by a recurring low-grade fever that would simmer for days and then recede, but never went far. He broke out in hives. One moment there were chills, the next hot flashes. Some mornings he woke so nauseous he would find himself vomiting up his breakfast into the toilet.

He did his best to be stealthy with these ailments, and chose to believe that the others did not notice, save for Klaus, who caught him once or twice and would say, “Morning sickness?” before cracking a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes, which remained guarded. Guarded from what, Ben wasn’t sure any more—from having to really see what was going on, and be worried, maybe. It was easier not to see certain things.

Sometimes he caught a glimpse of his own body and a dizzy terror would seize him, as though he stood teetering on a precipice. Was he only imagining the glaring evidence of his abnormality, or had he simply come to find his body, even when it was more or less human, grotesque? How the skin was nigh translucent in places, with its veins and tendons, its blemishes, the way it would move and distort when the thing stirred languidly beneath it like a sated cat stretching in the sun, the ugliness of bruises and insect bites, the entry points for infection, how the face was full of holes, the faint but undeniable discolored patterns, like otherworldly stretchmarks, which were either a normal but unsettling development, a sign of latent sickness, or his body changing in response to the Horror. He did not know which was worse. He really did not know. It was all unbearable if he thought about it for too long.

He thought,  _ I am changing. I am turning into something else. _ And then he had no idea where the thought had come from, or the certainty, or what in the world it was he could possibly be becoming.

Based on whatever the results were of all his study,  Hargreeves had him on a vitamin regimen. He took the vitamins the way Vanya took those pills (those pills, what was in those pills?). That is to say—without question. Still, sometimes there were odd cravings. Sometimes he could oblige them, when it came to foods he would eat anyway, something he could find in the pantry or request to make with Mom. But this was not always the case. The thing was indiscriminate in its appetite. Once, before he could stop it (he had not particularly wanted to stop it), it had eaten a seashell Allison kept on a shelf in her room. It had fixed their attention on the shell, and he had picked it up, repulsed by the then sudden and overwhelming impulse to put it in his mouth. He hadn’t. But the thing had taken it and disappeared with it, back wherever it went to.

The missing shell never came up; at least, if she thought one of them had taken it, she’d never accused him.

Every night it seemed his will wrestled with its. It wanted out, wanted to be what it was, whatever that was—movement, flux, a liminal creature without a fixed form. He wanted to stay grounded in the body. It forced their spine to arch and the vertebrae to elongate and push against the skin, it sprouted its arms and eyes and suckers, and then sores and bruises when he would not listen. It gnashed its teeth and he ached as though it were teething on his bones. He bore all this with what he told himself was a kind of heroism. His private suffering was the necessary sacrifice in order to...he wasn’t sure what. To keep a monster at bay. (When had They become a monster? An it?) He told himself there was something noble in this. Nobody would ever know what he’d endured for all their sakes, and that was the way he wanted it. He would never be heroic in the way Number One was heroic, but maybe this was his own quiet battle, born out within the body.

Except he didn’t feel heroic. Mostly he felt tired. He didn’t want this. He wanted someone to see how much he was struggling, and help him carry the weight. But he wasn’t a little kid any more, and there was nothing anyone could do.

Most of the time he knew he was just being insufferable. Concocting a mythology for himself in his head, trying to turn pain to good account. He wanted suffering to mean something, for this pain to be useful. Then he could bear it. Then he would not have to pity himself. He was still trying to make it mean something. Mostly it just hurt.

_ I am turning into something else. _

He wanted this not to terrify him. He wanted to be able to accept it with grace. But the fear was so great that he couldn’t tell any more what was panic, what was illness, what was the Horror punishing its keeper, and what was a mundane heart attack that might swoop down and destroy him without warning or drama. Just biology.

_ I could make it look like an accident. _

But he didn’t want to die. That wasn’t it at all. Dying would hurt, and he was tired of pain. If he could have just never been born—but it was too late for that. There was not even anyone to ask why.  _ Why did you make me? _ No one had made him—he was tossed into the world at random, like a child’s careless toss of a stone into a pond. Maybe everyone felt that way. Maybe. Maybe. Or maybe he was a stranger here on Earth.

“It’ll get better,” he said. Told himself, a desperate mantra, a talisman to hold onto in the dark where he was alone, was never alone. “It won’t feel like this forever. It will get easier, or I’ll get stronger—things will be better one day.”

If he said it enough times, and believed in it with everything he had, maybe it would become true.

Maybe the others were right. He was still a gullible child who believed in wishes and magic and happily ever after, for someone at least, if not himself. And it was time to grow up.

Five, Ben, and Vanya had swapped drafts of their college essays and were holed up in Vanya’s room reading. They’d gone in order; he had Five’s, Vanya had his, Five had Vanya’s. They’d give their feedback, edit, and swap again. Vanya sat on her bed, end of her pen resting against her lips. Five was at her desk, a pinch between his brows as he read, and Ben lay sprawled on the ground, changing his position every few minutes, unable to get comfortable but determined to concentrate nonetheless.

“Are you both finished?” Five asked. When they nodded, he said, “I marked some grammar and structural things. I think you should break the second paragraph into two. It’s a strong essay, but then, I’m not really sure what music schools look for in an essay—I'm sure the audition will be weighed more heavily.”

Vanya took her essay back, grimacing. “Yeah.”

“Are you worried about the audition?” Ben said, surprised.

“Of course I am,” she said. “I mean, it’s not the end of the world if I don’t get into any of my top choices—I'm sure I’ll get in somewhere, and I can probably still play for the school, but it would be nice to have some options...plus there’s all the scholarship opportunities...but I’m not holding my breath for that.”

“But...but you’re so good at it,” he said, blinking up at her in confusion.

She sighed. “Ben, how many other people have you heard play the violin? I’m just okay. I’m where anyone with my amount of training should be. I’m no prodigy.”

He heard their father’s voice and felt a flash of anger.  _ No prodigy. _ How many times had Vanya heard him say something of the sort, with no emotion but vague disappointment, apparently not knowing or not caring how it felt for her to hear those words from him, so casually?

“Raw talent will only get you so far in life,” Five said. “You are talented. But more importantly, you’re dedicated and disciplined. Those are qualities you can rely on, much more than somebody else’s idea of whatever talent is.”

“Look, it’s nice of you guys to say all this, but I’m really not being down on myself—I'm just being realistic about my chances. And...even if I do get in to my top choice, I’ll know it was because of him. Not me. It’ll be because he was able and willing to pay for my lessons. Not because I was so great or went out of my way to be hardworking.”

That was...bleak enough to leave Ben speechless for a moment. Five seemed to be in the same predicament, so he forced himself to say something. “That’s...but that’s not true, Vanya, at least not the whole truth. I guess it’s good to recognize when we have opportunities to do things we might not have, but—but you’re about to get out of here, and so whatever happens next, it’s all on you—you can’t look back and give credit to Dad for everything.”

“Are you being realistic, or are you scared?” Five said.

“Excuse me?”

“What would happen if you didn’t feel the need to downplay yourself? What if you were great?”

“But I’m not great,” she said, frustrated. “That’s not me being overly humble or whatever, it’s just a fact—I'm not bad, and I’m not great, I’m just okay.”

“You won’t even let yourself imagine it. What if you were great? Then what would you do?”

“I don’t know,” she scoffed. “I probably wouldn’t even apply to music school then, would I? I wouldn’t need it, I could just go play in an orchestra. Hell, I could even stop playing forever if I wanted to. Seriously, Five, wants the point in—”

She stopped, staring at her brother, her eyes widening as she realized what she’d said.

“Oh,” she said.

“Something to think about,” said Five.

Vanya sighed. “Any other critiques, Five, or can I get started reconsidering my entire essay and all of my life choices now?”

He smiled, his smug little smirk the others so often found insufferable, but which Ben and Vanya couldn’t help but find endearing. “That’s all for now.”

“I guess I’ll go next, unless you want to,” Ben said.

“No, go ahead,” said Vanya.

It was the order they always went in—but he didn’t like to assume.

Five had written his essay based on a research project he wanted to undertake, weaving in his knowledge on the subject and what research he’d done so far. “So I think you already know that most of the details in this went right over my head, but I think it’s a really good essay. I...really have no idea, but I have to think it’s going to stand out that somebody our age is already planning to dedicate himself to an advanced research project? You tie in lots of reasons as to why you’re applying to this specific school and how your research is relevant to their departments and all that, which is good. I honestly can’t imagine them not taking you.”

Five’s lips were pressed together in a thin line as he stared at a point on the wall behind Ben. For all that he cultivated an air of haughty aloofness, he’d never been very comfortable accepting sincerity or compliments. “Okay,” he said.

“You’re applying to a few different places, right? I’m guessing you change the details around depending.”

_ “Obviously. _ I mean. Yes. Any edits I should make? Any changes?”

“I marked a few little punctuation things...nothing major, you don’t have to change them, I don’t think any of it’s incorrect, I just thought it might flow better, but it’s up to you. And, well. Maybe you could add a personal detail? Like why this project is important to you?”

“I did that in the first paragraph.”

“Um...” Ben scanned the first paragraph, afraid he’d missed something. “You go over why it’s relevant and important to the field of study, but not really why you’re interested.”

“Does it matter? Do I need a personal reason to want to broaden our scope of knowledge?”

“I guess not—like I said, I can’t imagine your schools not taking you. They’ll probably be fighting over you, honestly. But there’s like a million things you could research, if all you wanted was just know more stuff—I just thought it would add a personal touch, to say why you personally want to study this specific thing.”

“All the books and prep sites say make it personal, personal this, personal that, but it’s all just a performance,” Five said, scowling. “How could I possibly explain all my reasons in such a small amount of words? I’d have to simplify so much, find an angle, make it palatable, turn my experience into, into something like a—like a brand. Why should I?”

“Okay, okay, you don’t have to. I get it, it’s annoying, a lot of it’s honestly kind of bullshit. Have Vanya read it, maybe she’ll have better critique.”

“I think it’s a valid point,” Vanya said. “Even if it’s kind of a funny thing to say, coming from you.”

“What?”

“Your essay,” she said, holding it up.

“Oh,” he said, wincing.

“The writing itself is really good, Ben. It’s not just clear and easy to follow--it’s original and surprising sometimes, the way you put things, in ways I’d never really read them put exactly before. I wanted to keep reading.”

“Um. But?”

“But the content. Ben, what would you say your essay is about?”

He flushed, playing with the sleeves of his jacket. “You mean you can’t...can’t tell?”

“Can  _ you _ ?”

“Well, if it’s that bad, just give it back and I’ll try again,” he said, doing his best to sound nonchalant.

“It’s not bad. It’s just...vague. You’ve written more about the rest of us than you have about yourself or why you even want to go to college. There’s a whole paragraph about how this is all Allison’s idea in the first place. Based on this essay, I wouldn’t even be sure you wanted to go at all.”

Her gaze was sharp and searching. She had not forgotten that night on the lake just a few weeks ago. None of them had, thought they hadn’t spoken about it.

He had no intention of doing so now. “It’s a personal essay, of course I wrote about you guys,” he said, a defensive note creeping into his voice.

“But they want to get to know you, Ben. It’s your application.”

“Maybe there’s just not that much to know about me.”

She fixed him with a look that let him know she knew he was full of it. It was a privilege to receive that look from her, honestly. He didn’t think his other siblings had ever seen it. “You can write about your family while still letting them get to know you and why you want to go to their school.”

He squirmed, breaking eye contact and fidgeting with his jacket zipper. “If I had something I was really good at or interested in, like you guys, I could write about that. But I don’t. And it’s hard to write something personal when everything that’s personal feels...too personal. Like, how do I tell them anything without giving too much away?”

“But what are you trying to hide?” Vanya asked. “Isn’t Allison writing about being born as part of the Phenomenon, and even being in the Academy? It doesn’t get much more tell-all than that. I’m not saying you have to go that far, but maybe you could talk to her about it.”

“Yeah, I have. And her essay’s really good. I just...don’t know if I want to write about that. I don’t feel like I have anything interesting to say about anything, so using that, it feels like...cheating, somehow? Like I’m exploiting something I really had no part of. I don’t want to have to tell that story to get in. But at the same time, it does seem so sort of...fake, to not mention it, when it’s sort of—when there’s not really anything else to know about me, or that even makes sense without knowing that. I don’t really...have a thing, I guess. Like an obvious thing to talk about.”

“You don’t?” Five said, his voice deceptively, irritatingly casual.

“No,” Ben said, frowning at him. “I’m not going to—no. That’s stupid.”

“I know it might seem like, exploiting circumstance or whatever, but really, who could blame you? I feel like writing about the Phenomena or the Academy is almost a guaranteed acceptance,” Vanya said. “Especially when your writing is so strong.”

Now she was just trying flattery to make him feel better. “I guess. One of my schools doesn’t even require an essay. I don’t think mine are as competitive as you guys’. I’ll probably get in somewhere, like the community school...maybe.”

They were all applying to a couple of the state’s public universities, but each of his siblings also had a “reach” school (or several). Their safety schools were his reach schools. If nothing else, he thought the local community college would probably take him, and maybe that was best. It was overwhelming enough without moving far away to a new place, and it seemed like a fine school in and of itself.

He was trying not to think about the possibility of any of them moving far away, either. He knew it was only a fantasy, but he imagined them all in the same apartment, going to the same state school. They’d be so close that Luther could even visit. He was still clinging to the idea that he wouldn’t have to choose, that somehow once the time came to leave, everything would have worked itself out. As little change as possible. Imagining anything else made him feel like he was about to get lost in the vast empty blankness of the future, a blank he couldn’t fill in no matter how he tried.

He really did understand, at least partially, Luther’s need for them all to stay—not out of responsibility or obligation, like Luther, but fear. They just had to go to the same school, or else at least live together, or else...

Or else there was always the Academy.

But could he imagine that any easier? Him and Luther alone in a big empty house...no voices in the halls, five missing heartbeats. Would there still be training and classes, their adult lives  spoonfed to them on their father’s schedule? Or would they have to fill the time themselves? With what? Could he really imagine staying here with all of them gone—pacing the quiet halls and peering into rooms like a restless ghost, less real and less human without all of them around?

No more late-night conversations with Klaus, shaking each other out of a nightmare and trading secrets they wouldn’t be brave enough to say in the daylight. No reading with Five and Vanya, listening to her play, no feeling of pride when Five cracked a joke and he was the first to laugh while the rest were still wondering what was so funny. No more sense of belonging so great it hurt sometimes, when he was included while Diego and Klaus were goofing off, even if he was quiet and more reserved, still they made him feel like he belonged there, with their laughter falling over him like something precious. No more long talks with Allison, no more feeling both proud and humbled that he was the one she often felt safe coming to with doubts or insecurities, two things she did her best to pretend she didn’t have. No more, no more, no more... Just him and Luther on missions...because of course he’d have to keep going on missions, if he stayed. No one there to help, to pick up the slack. The Horror getting angrier, he getting weaker. And Luther’s faith in him—no, Luther’s faith in himself, and his refusal to believe Ben, when he told him he couldn’t keep doing this, couldn’t keep letting Them out only to witness more carnage, partake of more violence until they learned to crave it because it meant freedom, only to be hurt and return to him wounded. (He carried them around all the time like a wound he had to nurse, one that never healed.) How long could that last? Was that really better? At least it wasn’t a total unknown, but could he endure it?

He understood Luther’s deference to obligation—to their father’s expectations, to the way things were. It meant not having to choose, because the choice had already been made for you.

But there was always a choice, wasn’t there? Even deciding not to choose, that too was a choice. There was no freedom from the obligation to choose, free will itself a terrible yoke to labor under—you could do anything, even nothing at all—but you had to choose.

No one could choose for him. It was terribly lonely. It was so lonely, he reached out to Them.

“What do you think?” he said, sitting up in bed one night, letting his book rest open across his stomach. “Stay or go?”

No one was around to see. He let Them move and stretch beneath their skin without any attempt to stifle Them. And he realized that it hurt less—and he wondered when he’d come to accept as a fact that  everything They did was painful. Some knot of tension eased inside him. It ached as it did, but he could breathe easier as They made their skin a rippling landscape, like wind in the leaves or water flowing in a creek. One slim tentacle, a pale teal color like faded sea glass, reached past the book to brush his face and loop around his wrist.

And all of a sudden he was ashamed. Not of Them, not of his body—he didn’t know where it came from, but it was such shame and regret as he’d never felt before, because it seemed to be a premonition of even more to come, of great loss. And it was all he could do not to cry.

It was a damn good thing nobody was here to see him like this. Getting teary-eyed and sentimental over a body-snatching monster (his twin, his double, his other). They’d really think he’d lost his mind.

“Wherever I go, you’ll have to go, too,” he said. “You should get to have some say in it, don’t you think? Didn’t we used to—share more? Didn’t we used to know what we were thinking? I never made a big choice for both of us before, not on my own.”

But was that a lie? Hadn’t he been the one forcing them to be still and small and quiet for some time now, so that he could be all of those things, too? (If he was small and quiet he was safe, he could be good.) Didn’t he try to wield Them like a tool during missions, like something that could be picked up and used and then put away again, just like Dad and Luther wanted, the way they imagined it worked—like he pulled Them down off a shelf, and then stowed them away again, out of sight and out of mind until They were useful?

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m—I’m sorry. But I don’t know what to do. Isn’t there...isn’t there somewhere else you can go? Can’t we come apart? Can’t we? It wouldn’t kill us, I mean—we're both a whole, whole thing...person...on our own, aren’t we? I am, I know I am, I have to be—so why can’t we come apart?”

The idea filled him with a kind of horror not entirely dissimilar to that which he felt when trying to imagine living on his own without his family, and that made the shame multiply, and he felt wrong, wrong, wrong. What was the matter with him? Was he keeping Them together and attached as much as They were? He didn’t—he couldn’t possibly want this. Nobody in their right mind would ever—he couldn’t. No.

“Answer me,” he said. “You have to give me something. You owe me that, don’t you think? I never asked for—I never wanted—did you? Are you making this happen, or is this as horrible for you as it is for me? Because it is horrible, you know that, don’t you?”

He yanked the tentacle off his wrist, batting it away. He stood, feeling dizzy and sick, and paced across the room, but that didn’t help at all, did it? He couldn’t walk away from them. He couldn’t get so much as an inch of space, one second alone in the body.

“Just stop,” he whispered, feeling brittle, like whatever he was had been worn very thin over time and might shatter. “Just stop—please just stop touching me, just go away. Why can’t you go away for just a minute?”

He had come to look at themselves one at a time—his body, and Theirs. But then he looked down at where Their arm touched his body—where it was attached, where it was as undeniably attached as his own arms and legs—and he had to laugh. The illusion of separation shattered. There was no his body and Theirs. Neither was so gruesome on its own—but looking at the juncture where they met, he felt a sensation of vertigo. And it was not just that one spot, most obvious though it was. It was everywhere.

“If that’s how it is,” he said, gritting his teeth, “then things should be equal, don’t you think? It should go both ways.” He took the tentacle in one hand and squeezed. He knew how to hurt them, and They let him. They could have fought back, could perhaps even have torn him apart (although that would kill them as well, wouldn’t it? Would it?) but instead They simply submitted and let him squeeze their soft flesh until his breath came in short pants and tears stung his eyes, because it hurt, it hurt, no matter how much he wanted it not to be true, it hurt. He felt the bruise forming under his fingers.

He put his other hand on his stomach, pressing his fingers in. “I hate you,” he whispered. “Where are you? I want you to know what this feels like. See how you like it.”

He pressed and pressed and nothing happened. Then he felt a dizzying tug somewhere behind his navel, and the image of himself turning inside out burst open unbidden in his mind and he saw the portal opening wide enough to swallow himself whole and he was somewhere else where nothing was solid and everything was alive and the whole world was one multitudinous organism walking in its sleep and dreaming of a world like Earth but not quite and he fell through the dream and was back in his room falling through the portal into the dream and back into his—

His head was splitting. Dark winged shapes that were like insects but not quite flickered at the corners of his tunneled vision and his ears were full of the muffled sound of voices speaking languages he didn’t recognize (didn’t he?), if they were languages at all.

He needed not to be alone (he was never alone). Wrenching open his bedroom door, he lurched into the hall and knocked hard on Klaus’ door. It wasn’t all the way shut, and swung open at his touch. His brother was sitting cross-legged on his bed across from Allison who was holding his hand with a  nail polish brush poised in her other hand.

“Holy Jesus fuck,” Klaus said, startling and making to scuttle backwards on the bed, nearly falling off the edge. Allison sat very still with her eyes very wide .

Ben stepped back, bumping into the doorframe. Although he still looked shellshocked, Klaus was doing his best to move past his initial reaction and was recovering faster than Allison, who still had a frightened, frantic look, like she might try and stab him with the  nail polish brush if he took a step closer.

Klaus laughed; a shrill, forced sound. “Oh my god—you really—for a second there I didn’t know _ what _ —hey, it’s okay, don’t go—wait, come back.”

Ben stopped outside the doorway, hovering there in the dark hall. He pulled his sleeves down over his hands and wrapped his arms around himself, shivering. His teeth were chattering. He couldn’t believe he’d barged in there like that—looking like that—like something that didn’t make sense, should only be seen in a nightmare and be forgotten upon waking, its appearance impossible to recall without breaking something in the mind. Didn’t he know he had to be careful?

He had only known how badly he wanted to be comforted, but maybe he didn’t deserve to be.

“I’m sorry, I, I didn’t mean to—I’ll go,” he said.

“No, no, wait, hey...it’s okay. I mean...are you? Okay?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice too bright with false cheer. Why was he lying? He didn’t even know anymore. It just came so readily, like a compulsion—hide everything under the bed, smooth everything over, don’t rock the boat. “I’m good, everything’s fine, I was just—you guys are busy, I’ll talk to you later.”

“You don’t really look too good,” Klaus said, frowning. “Which I mean in, like, the most caring way possible.”

“Ben, don’t be like that,” Allison said, the stern disapproval in her voice a poor mask for how rattled she still was. “You just startled us, don’t go running away, just come in.”

But he couldn’t stand to be there any longer, being seen by them. He shut the door and without thinking began to look for the one person he really desperately wanted to talk to.

Five wasn’t in his room, but it didn’t take long for Ben to find him as he was passing down the hall towards the library. Light came through the crack below the door to their father’s study, along with a shuffling sound, like someone rifling through papers. This was odd, but not something Ben cared to investigate. It was none of his business. Best to leave such things alone.

Then the light went off. There was a faint pop and a blue flash, and then there was Five standing in the hall on the other side of the door.

It was exceedingly rare to catch Five in an unguarded moment. In fact, Ben couldn’t recall a time when he’d done so for more than a second. There was a moment now before Five had seen him, during which his brother stood holding the doorknob he had not used, staring into space with a vacant expression. 

Then Five saw him. Rather than startling, his response was to go very still; not the frozen stillness of prey in hiding, but the coiled stillness of a snake before it strikes, a conservation of momentum, a latent violence in the casual curve of his idle hand around the doorknob behind him. There was something comic and endearing in him touching it out of habit, perhaps without realizing he was doing so.

Then he relaxed, and the potential for violence drained out of his posture, leaving him looking oddly wilted. “Oh,” he said. “It’s just you.”

Ben knew he didn’t mean that to sound as dismissive as it did; or at least, he chose not to take offense. “What are you doing in Dad’s office?”

Five blinked slowly, biding his time. “You look...”

“I know. I think I just gave Three and Four a heart attack, I got the message. But seriously, what are you doing?”

Five looked around the empty hall, before beckoning Ben closer. “Not here.”

“There’s nobody—”

Before he could protest, Five had grabbed his wrist and jumped. Ben staggered away from him on the roof, stomach lurching. He groaned and tried to keep his dinner down.

“Was that really necessary?” he said.

Five was peering around, as though he seriously thought he might see somebody spying at them from the shadows. “Sorry,” he said.

“You don’t sound very sorry.”

But Five had grabbed his wrist without hesitation, had touched him, willingly, like today was any other day, and he was nobody but himself, same as always, so Ben couldn’t hold it against him.

“You can’t tell the others,” Five said. “Not yet.”

“Tell them what?”

“Anything.”

“Five...”

His brother looked at him, and his face seemed to soften, concern creasing his brow. “Oh. Right. Are you okay? You’re...it’s sort of hard to look at you—like my brain doesn’t know what to make of what my eyes are telling it. It’s strange, I’ve never felt like that before, about anything else, except for when I saw...all those timelines.”

“Then...don’t look, I guess. It’ll go away, I was just...it was stupid, it’s nothing. Tell me what’s going on with you.”

But Five’s concern seemed only to increase, a note of genuine, unexpected worry creeping into his tone. “Are you feeling all right? Is it the Horror? Tell me.”

“How’d you know?”

“Well, it’s...that’s what it always is, isn’t it?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what I  said. Just...tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know what I was trying to do,” he mumbled. “I just—I wanted them to go away, or—or just make them do  _ something, _ and I—I don’t know what happened, but I think I went somewhere else, Five. I think I  _ was _ something else.”

Where that last admission had come from, he couldn’t say. He hadn’t known he was going to say it, but once he did, he knew it was the terrifying truth, even if he had no idea what it meant.

A flicker of keen interest flashed in Five’s eyes, but his face remained grave. “Where? What?”

“Don’t tell anyone else about this,” he blurted. “Please, Five. I’m just telling you.”

“Jumping sideways,” Five mumbled.

“What?”

“Do you remember what we talked about, a few months ago? When you asked me about where They might come from, and I told you about, you know. The timelines.”

A few months ago? It couldn’t have been that long already—at the same time, it had to have been longer.

The closer the time came to making a decision to stay or leave, the stranger time seemed to flow.

“I remember. Of course I remember.”

“Well. That’s why I was in the study tonight. Coincidences, huh? What a symmetrical night we’re having. I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything,” Five said, with a thin, unconvincing smile.

“Please try and be clear,” Ben pleaded. He didn’t want to whine, but...he didn’t know how much more emotional turmoil he could withstand in one night. His skin still felt like it was trying to get up and walk away and his head was foggy and the Horror was being disturbingly quiet, the residual signs of its earlier outburst like unconscious aftershocks, uncontrollable as shivers. It left him feeling sick and hollow.

Five barked out a laugh. “I wish I could be. Believe me, no one wishes more than I do that I could explain with any amount of clarity what the hell is going on with anything.” Five steepled his fingers at his lips, peering over them at Ben with an intense, unblinking gaze. “How are you feeling? I know that right now you’re rattled—I mean in general. Your health.”

“I’m _fine,_ ” he said. “But if you and Dad keep asking me that, I’m gonna start wondering if the two of you know something I don’t.”

He’d meant it as a joke, but Five’s expression only sharpened. “He’s been worried about your health?”

“I don’t know, Five,” Ben said, exasperated. “I really can’t tell what he thinks, or if he’s ever actually worried about any of us. But I don’t want you to worry. I’m—I can handle it.”

“Are you sure?”

Ben blinked. His brother’s apparent doubt in him stung. “Well, I’d better be, because there’s not exactly another option, is there? It doesn’t look like we’re going our separate ways any time soon, so...”

“If you could, though—would you want that?”

“What?”

“I’m not saying I think it’s possible. I just wonder, if it was, if that’s something you’d want.”

“I...I don’t...” He felt himself flushing with shame and embarrassment. “Why would you even ask me that?”

“You brought it up. I was just curious.”

“You’re stalling. Why were you in Dad’s office?”

“I’ve been looking into things.”

“You've been snooping, you mean.”

“Sure, Six, I’ve been  _ snooping _ . After...after the  _ incident, _ which I think was instigated by myself in another timeline, I’ve had...a few questions that need answering. A few concerns about things I saw that I don’t...that I wasn’t sure, if they were fixed, or inevitable. It seemed like in most timelines, I get trapped in the future. An apocalyptic future.”

“Oh. That’s...not good.”

Five snorted. “Hardly. But that didn’t happen here. And not because I’d seen it happen in other timelines, and prevented it—it's just that enough is different about this timeline that it never happened in the first place. But there were a few other...things, that almost always happen.”

“Five...just how much of the future do you know?” Ben asked, with dawning horror.

How could anyone live like that, knowing what was to come? It would drive you mad, it would turn you to stone—inanimate, like god, knowing everything ahead of time.

“None of it,” Five snapped. “I didn’t see the future. Not exactly. I saw—potentialities.”

“You mean like, multiple universes.”

“That’s not what I—actually, fine, call it whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t matter. But here’s the thing, Ben, what really gets to me. I don’t think we’re the main branch.”

“What?”

“In fact, I don’t think we’re even close. And the more we diverge, the less...relevant, to the main timestream we become. Does that mean our timeline will degrade? Or is it stable, will it be able to sustain itself in isolation? Will it merge eventually, get assimilated, overwritten? Can we prevent that by nudging things into alignment, or by purposefully diverging? I don’t know.”

“Five, wait, slow down—I don’t understand.”

“Join the club.”

“This is...this is too much,” Ben murmured. “No one person should have to think about all of this. You shouldn’t have to deal with this alone, Five.”

“If not me, then who?”

There was no self-pity or righteousness in Five’s voice. His tone was perfectly matter-of-fact. It made Ben hurt for him.

“Does anyone have to? Can’t we just...be? Without worrying about—about other timelines, whatever that even means? This is the main timeline because it’s the one we’re in, isn’t that enough? It’s the one we’ve got, and honestly, isn’t that a good thing? You’re still here. You didn’t get lost. Why worry about what might have happened, or did happen, in some other parallel universe or whatever?”

“Not a parallel universe,” Five said automatically, without any real feeling.

“Sure, whatever you say. I just don’t think this is good for you.”

“Whoever gave you the idea that people only do what’s good for them, Six?” Five said, again with that strange, thin smile.

“Nobody. I guess I just think it’d be nice if we all tried it for a change,” he said, unable to keep the waspish irritation out of his voice. It was enough to startle an amused snort out of Five. He always had relished Ben’s moments of ill-temper.

He had a feeling sometimes that if he really were as nice as his other siblings liked to say he was, Five might not like him at all.

“Maybe you’re right,” Five said.

“That’d be a change.”

“Oh, come on, it’s just you and me here, don’t be so modest—you know I don’t give two shits about modesty.”

“Oh gee, really? I hadn’t noticed that about you.”

Five grinned, and Ben was pleased he’d been able to make him grin like that. He almost looked his age for once, if a little sharp around the edges.

“Seriously. You’re not going to tell me what’s going on? What you were looking for in there?”

Five’s face grew somber. “You’ll find out. But I can’t tell you first. You’ll understand why.”

“Okay. I believe you. Just...just be careful, Five. Okay? Really think about it—maybe you should just try to forget all this time travel stuff. Jumping through space, I mean, that’s cool enough on its own, isn’t it? Who needs time travel? It’s the worst.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Exactly.”

“You be careful, too,” Five said, something in his tone Ben couldn’t place making him question the meaning of the words.

Ben grinned. “I’m always careful. It’s the rest of you guys I worry about.”

Five’s sad little smile frightened him. He was glad to let the conversation end, to go back inside and be safe back in bed—if he could call it safe.

If he were brave, he might have pushed. Might have found a way to make Five tell him what was going on, instead of talking in circles until he was too confused to question his brother’s actions. But he was not brave. Not even a little.

In his dreams, the world was illuminated as if from within by an indeterminate half-light that may have been dawn or dusk. There was no way to tell based on the direction of the rising or setting sun, because there was no sun—at least, not one he could see, only light suffused throughout the air and in the heavy clouds. He was staring down a cliff—or perhaps the top of a tower—down into the waters of what might have been a bay or a cove, judging by the curved jaw of dark land ringing out from either side. He could see down for miles into that water. He could see leviathans hovering there in the deep or gliding silently by in utter silence, with a sound below sound he felt in his bones. Their immensity was so great he could feel the earth-rending wake of their passage even from so far above. Although they were solid, their forms refused to resolve. There went something like the upturned bell of a jellyfish with its train of trailing strands, a spiderweb, a many-limbed whale which moved like a Viking ship with each limb an oar manned by an individual rower, a serpent, a bunch of grapes, a submarine with a light that went round and round like a lighthouse beam, a huge pair of connected rings. Except they were none of those things, not really. For hours he watched them—days—time was different there. It was a medium he moved through, like space. Time was dense, he sank into it, and as he sank the water grew closer, and he was falling, and falling, and he knew he would be unmade—would not be what he had been—would be something else, by the time he hit that water—and then he realized he was already underwater, had been this whole time, and so what was this surface he was about to break through, into what?

Then he would wake and have to repeat his own name and the names of his siblings until the waking world felt real and solid once again.

He didn’t know what the dreams meant. Did they have to mean anything?

He was inclined to think that they ought to, but the world was under no obligation to do or be what he thought it ought to. That much, at least, was abundantly clear.

Not that he knew at all how the world ought to be. Kinder, perhaps—yes, a kinder world, he thought. But he no longer knew what he meant by that, if he ever really had. It left a hollow feeling behind, the thought. Like an old lie that had been allowed to take up space for a long time, and created a void where the truth had atrophied and was now lost forever.

Maybe someday, the right person would be born, the one who really did have an image of that other, kinder world in their heart, and not just an empty space where he thought it should be. But it wasn’t him. There was a gap underneath his heart, there was a hollow space at his center, and it was empty except for darkness. The dark was not such a bad thing—you could hide there, be safe and unseen. There was a mercy in darkness. But the world wanted light. He felt misshapen somehow inside, and was afraid everyone could tell just by looking. Under a microscope, beneath a bright light, it would be all too clear, the ways in which he was not what he ought to be.

Just like the world, then.


	14. Holds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the family ties are wearing very thin indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, dear reader! If you are still here, thank you! I am really truly enjoying going on a journey through this story with you. You may be pleased to hear that this story is officially completely pre-written and all I've left to do is edit/upload. You may be less pleased to hear that I already anticipate a sequel. That's for a few reasons--mainly, that I discovered a natural stopping place where this story seemed to tell me it had run its course. Also, because this has become so very long! So, yes, I anticipate gathering the material that didn't make it into this first installment into a sequel, as there are many more scenes I want to include, many of them...a bit fluffier than what is typical here. That's being a teenager for you...whole lot of angst. I want to be clear that I love all these characters and have entire arcs planned for each of them but there still has to be conflict and they are all responding to a dreadful childhood and home environment in their own ways...it must get worse before it gets better. :,)
> 
> Anyway, a sincere thank you to anyone still reading. As always, please do feel free to let me know what you think, as I have enjoyed interacting with you all. Many thanks!

Luther wasn’t speaking to him. 

Because it was Luther, there were no passive-aggressive jibes or dramatic refusals to speak or be in the same room. But Ben could still tell he was being given the cold-shoulder, and so could everybody else. Not that Luther was on such great terms with the rest of them, but... 

But he’d never been like this to Ben before. 

Luther went around now with a wounded, martyred look—as though he were bearing some great trial with all the stoic strength in the world. It was honestly becoming just a little insufferable. (If Six was aware of his own hypocrisy on this point, he didn’t want to be—it wasn’t the same. Luther had a choice, his burden was self-appointed, he could set it down and leave it behind any time he wanted to. Couldn’t he?) 

Ben tried to catch him after breakfast one morning, before their classes began. 

“Luther, wait.” 

Luther turned, pausing in the doorway, his face neutral. Closed-off. He waited. 

Ben swallowed the lump in his throat and punched down the part of himself that wanted to give up right now. Easier to slink away and continue acting like they weren’t ignoring each other than to face Luther’s steely gaze head-on, alone. 

But he had to do this. He was the one who’d caused this rift in the first place, he could be the one to fix it, too. “I think we should talk.” 

Luther continued to stare without speaking, and Ben had the terrible thought that his brother had learned this intimidation tactic from their father. The thought made him feel so guilty that the words came pouring out. “I just feel like you’ve been...avoiding me? And I—I know you’re mad at me, for...for thinking about leaving, and...and I’m sorry for not just telling you the truth right away, I was just...nervous, and, it’s stupid, I know, but I was just thinking that maybe the problem would go away on its own or get solved somehow, and...I don’t know. Can you say something? Please?” 

Luther looked away for a second, like he was embarrassed for him. “I’m not _mad_ at you, Six. We’re not little kids.” 

Even now, Luther could still cut him down to size with a look, a single word. 

“Well, I...I’m sorry, Luther. I know it’s not that simple, I’m just...I’m trying to make up for it.” 

“Do you know that?” Luther shook his head and looked down, his jaw tight. If Ben hadn’t known him so well, he’d have thought he looked angry. As it was he just looked sad, which was worse. “You’re sorry. Fine. Now what? I forget you lied to me? I forget about how you’re planning to leave? We shouldn’t even need to talk. Our actions should speak for us. If you feel like you made a mistake, you don’t need to apologize to me—just make the right choice.” 

Another platitude. It almost made Ben want to say something unkind. Couldn’t One think for himself, couldn’t he say one honest, original thing without trotting out some tired old saying, like that ended the conversation? 

He was in no position to say anything of the sort, of course. 

“So you’re saying the only way to fix things between us is for me to stay?” 

“That’d be a start,” said Luther. “But not for me—not to ‘fix things.’ You should stay because it’s the right thing to do. The only thing to do.” 

“You really think that?” 

Luther nodded. “I know that. And I want you to know it, too, before you make a mistake and do something you’ll regret. I’m really trying to look out for you, Ben,” he said, lowering his voice, the steel melting in his eyes and a worried, pleading look coming through. “I want you to do the right thing. For your own sake as much as anything.” 

And Ben believed him. Whole-heartedly. 

Luther’s face closed off again, became a mask. “We’ll be late for class. Better get going.” 

When he followed Luther out of the kitchen, he saw his siblings lingering in the next room, pretending to be busy. He knew they’d been eavesdropping and felt his face heat up—with anger or embarrassment, he wasn’t sure anymore. 

But that was just how they all were—obsessively in each other’s business, because it was their business, too. 

Nothing had been solved. They hadn’t moved an inch from where they’d been before. 

Luther wanted what was best for him. Luther was looking out for him, like a leader should. 

But Ben didn’t just want a leader, didn’t just want Luther to consider him a reliable team member. He wanted a brother, a friend. He wanted Luther to _like_ him. 

He couldn’t concentrate all morning. Between devoting over half his concentration to his constant internal conversation with the Horror and frantically running through ways he could make Luther happy with him again, he didn’t have a lot of spare attention to give to lessons. 

And then there was the part of himself that was incensed at what Luther had said to him, the way he’d said it. Why did Luther get to make him feel so small? Like a scolded child. 

...Make Luther happy with him again? Really? That’s what he was worried about? 

Maybe he deserved that condescension. 

That afternoon’s training was spent practicing escaping from holds. 

They paired off—Luther and Diego, Allison and Klaus, and Five and Ben. It was a typical configuration, a hold-over from when they were children and had been counted off—One and Two, Three and Four, Five and Six. 

Their father was barely observing them today. As time went on, more and more it became Luther’s responsibility to lead them in training. Sometimes, their father didn’t watch at all. Like he had better things to be doing all of a sudden, more pressing matters. 

“Okay,” Luther said. “Everybody go, I’m starting the clock.” 

“Don’t fuck up my hair,” Allison hissed at Klaus. 

“I’m not falling for _that_ again,” he hissed back. 

The last time he’d been accordingly gentle with her, she’d caught him off guard. It hadn’t gone well for him. 

“You go first,” Five said. 

“Okay,” Ben said, sheepish and apologetic. “Are you ready?” 

“Yes. The clock’s already started.” 

“Okay. I’m gonna grab you now.” 

“That’s the idea.” 

“Are you ready?” 

“I already said yes. Just get it over with, would you?” 

“Sorry,” he squeaked, wincing as he gingerly wrapped his arms around Five in what was more like a terribly awkward hug than a proper hold. 

“If you don’t do it right, we’ll have to go again,” Five whispered. 

Ben knew he was right. “Sorry,” he muttered again when he felt Five wince as he adjusted his hold. 

“Don’t be,” said Five, who in one fluid motion had one hand braced above Ben’s elbow and one below, stepping forward with his full momentum and forcing Ben’s arm to swing open like the hinge on a door. He followed it up with a jab from the heel of his hand to the solar plexus which left Six stunned and gasping. 

At least Five was quick and neat about it. 

Diego was still struggling in Luther’s grasp. With a frustrated groan, he slammed the heel of his shoe down onto Luther’s foot, grinding it down. 

Luther held fast without a wince. 

“Asshole,” Diego hissed. “You aren’t making this fair.” 

“A real fight won’t be fair.” 

Diego dropped his weight, apparently so out of his mind with frustration he honestly thought he could throw Luther, who budged about as much as a brick wall would have. 

As much as Ben knew Diego had grown to resent their father, he did not miss how his brother’s face was reddening as he flicked his gaze over to where Hargreeve’s was watching with a cold, derisive expression. 

“Tap out,” said Luther. “You can work with someone else.” 

“Or you can stop being a prick, how about that?” 

“You need to learn to keep a cool head. You aren’t stronger than me—you'll have to be clever or quick if you want to come out on top.” 

“Except I’m not going to be fighting a freaking bulldozer in real life,” Diego grunted, still struggling ineffectually in Luther’s grasp, though they could all tell he was only wearing himself out. 

“You never know what you might encounter. You want me to go easy on you?” 

“Hell no.” 

“It would only be doing you a disservice. I’m only trying to help you, you know.” 

“Fuck your help,” Diego said, and then he bent his neck and bit Luther’s hand, between his thumb and forefinger. 

“Diego!” Allison said. 

Luther let him go, more out of surprise than pain, judging by the look on his face as he stared down at his hand. 

Ben thought he saw fear or panic in Diego’s frantic eyes, but Diego was doing his best to keep his face a mask of righteous anger. He scrambled away from Luther, then stopped and squared his shoulders as though expecting a blow in retaliation. 

“You can’t do that,” Allison cried, glancing at their father, whose face remained impassive. “He can’t do that!” 

Ben watched their father flick his gaze over to meet Luther’s, and felt a sick spiral of nausea in his stomach when he saw his brother’s face tighten with resolve. 

Whatever Luther had read in their father’s expression was a mystery to Ben—the man’s face was ever unreadable to him. 

But then Luther turned back to them and said, “Anything’s fair in a real fight. Especially if you haven’t got any shame.” 

“Oh, fuck you!” Diego spat. “You know that wasn’t a fair fight to begin with.” 

“But this isn’t a real fight,” said Allison. “There are rules, we can’t just—if anything goes we’ll tear each other apart.” 

“We’ll do it again,” Luther said, ignoring her. “Two, switch with Three or Five. Let everyone have a chance at breaking a hold before we move on for now.” 

“Don’t you want to at least wash that hand off?” Allison said. 

“It’s nothing. Barely broke the skin.” 

Diego scoffed. “This is ridiculous.” 

“This could save your life, or somebody else’s life,” said Luther. 

“If you really believe that, you’re even dumber than you look. That’s not what this is about.” 

“If you don’t want to switch, we’ll just start the next round now.” 

Diego grit his teeth. For a second, the air was charged, and Ben had the wild thought that anything might happen. 

Then Diego ducked his head and scowled. “Fine.” 

Luther started the clock and Five grabbed Ben in the hold. 

Normally, Five could be counted on to take training seriously without ever adding any unnecessary effort or force; treating it like a challenge he wanted to surmount, but never using it as a place to settle a score. Perhaps because he was determined for everyone to think that he had nothing to prove. 

Now, though, it seemed he couldn’t be bothered. Ben easily broke free of the hold without exerting himself much at all. 

“You could have made that look more convincing,” Five murmured, regarding him with bored, lidded eyes. 

“Thank you,” Ben whispered. 

He’d never liked combat training. Too much contact, too much touching, too much jostling and getting startled. He didn’t want to hit anyone—not in training, and not in a real fight either. Besides, it made the Horror jumpy. More and more it confused when he was actually in danger and when he was safe, responding to being winded in training with all the vigor it wanted to bring to a real fight. 

He looked around for their father, but he was no longer in the room. When had he slipped out? Why? Why had his attention lately seemed to be elsewhere so often? Why did this make him so uneasy? And if he wasn’t watching anymore...why couldn’t they just stop? 

“We’ll switch to sparring now,” said Luther. “Six, come here.” 

Ben looked up, knowing he’d gone wide-eyed like a deer in headlights. “Me?” 

Luther nodded. “You’re still holding back. It’s okay. We’ll work on it.” 

“He’s fine,” Diego snapped. 

“You think you’re being kind,” Luther said. “But you’re only hurting him by babying him.” 

“Oh yeah, because he’s so defenseless,” Diego scoffed. “Like he couldn’t take you in a heartbeat if he really wanted to.” 

“If he’d learn to stop holding back, he could.” Luther beckoned him forward. “Come on, Six. We’ll go first. The rest of you, pay attention so you can give feedback.” 

Ben shuffled forward, head ducked. He wished he hadn’t gotten so tall. He wasn’t the tallest of them, but still—it threw a wrench in his continued effort to fold himself up so small he one day disappeared. 

Luther started the clock and Ben fell into a defensive position, blocking Luther’s first two movements, already bracing himself for the inevitable. He knew Luther was just letting him warm up. 

No matter how big he talked to the others when Dad was in earshot, Luther had always gone easy on him. 

_They were fourteen years old in training, and their father was watching him and Luther spar—watching One pull all his punches while Six flagged and threw up weak, cringing defenses._

_“Enough,”_ _Hargreeves_ _said. “Number One. You do remember what we talked about, don’t you?”_

_One’s face had closed off. “Yes, sir.”_

_“Then you know what a disservice you do everyone, when you allow your teammates to remain weak.”_

_Luther had looked at him, a plea in his eyes._

_What could Ben do? It was going to happen either way. (Inconceivable, that Luther would defy their father.) All he could do was reassure his brother._

_So_ _he smiled at Luther as he squared his shoulders, resisting with great difficulty the urge to hunch in on himself, protect his middle. He smiled at his brother and nodded and mouthed,_ It’s okay. 

And then it was the present again, and Luther had him in a headlock before Ben could react. 

“You’re in your head too much,” Luther said. “Remember what we talked about? About how all of you has to show up and be present?” 

“Yes,” Ben panted, his face hot and flushed, more with embarrassment than breathlessness. 

Even now Luther was being careful with him, so careful. 

He wondered if Luther even knew what it was like, not to hold back. Not to be afraid of his own strength. He wondered how he could ask it of Ben, when he couldn’t bring himself to do it either, when he must know at least a small fraction of what it was to be in over his head with his own potential for destruction. 

“Then you know you’re only making this harder on yourself,” Luther said. 

Ben dropped his weight and stumbled when he found himself unexpectedly free. He spun around, backing up. 

“Good,” said Luther. “Get angry. Remember? Try and hit me.” 

“I don’t want to hit you.” 

He had to duck and scramble to avoid Luther’s next volley of blows—all of them still slower and far less forceful than he knew Luther was capable of, slower even than the already-curbed force he always applied in training with the rest of them. 

“You never want to use the Horror on missions,” said Luther, pacing in circles, forcing Ben to match his movements. “But how could I ever trust that you’d be safe without it when you rely on it to defend you? You’d be a liability. If you could fight on your own, protect yourself better, maybe it wouldn’t always have to come to that.” 

He supposed there was some truth to that—but it wasn’t the whole truth, and it made a spark of anger light up inside him. That wasn’t fair. He wasn’t the only one who wasn’t great in combat. Of course they were all competent in self-defense and could hold their own in a fair fight, but their missions weren’t ever fair fights—either all of them but Luther were outgunned and weaker than the people they were expected to subdue, or they used their powers and tipped the scales in their favor. “You’d ask me to use Them anyway. That’s not why you’re doing this. I don’t understand.” 

Luther’s next volley was slightly faster—still slow enough for Ben to dodge, but he had to work harder for it. 

“Is it because you wish you were different? Is that why you hold back, you want to be normal? But you aren’t. That’s not what I want for you. It’s not what you should want for yourself. You’re more than that. You could be so much more.” 

Was that true? Did he wish he was normal? He wished for a lot of things—that they were all safe, had a chance to be happy, that They weren’t such a burden, always wanting more than he was willing to give. Was that the same as wanting to be normal? 

He knew he hadn’t always had such misgivings about being different. But that had been before he knew just how different he was. 

Now he wasn’t sure what he wanted. Even less sure what he could get. 

“You aren’t even trying,” said Luther. 

“But I _am._ ” 

“I’ve left myself wide open, and you haven’t taken a single swing,” Luther said, spreading his arms. “Go ahead, Six. Hit me.” 

“What are you _doing_?” 

Luther’s face was flushed, expression twisted with his effort not to show what he was feeling. “I said terrible things to you. You must be furious. Come on.” 

“This is so fucked,” said Klaus. “Does it have to be Six? If _I_ hit you, will it make this stop sooner?” 

Ever the easily distracted, Ben glanced over at Klaus. From the corner of his eye he saw Luther move, and scrambled to dodge his next attack. Expecting Luther to follow the same pattern as he had before, he paused to catch his breath, as he’d been allowed to do previously. “Luther, can’t we—” 

And then Luther slugged him in the stomach and all the air rushed out of his lungs. He staggered back, arms instinctively going around his middle to protect Them—himself—themselves. Finnicky creature that They were, and even more on edge from all the suppression, They put on a show making his skin ripple like boiling water, and he thought— _threat display_. He saw butterflies flaring open wings patterned to resemble a bird’s face, a dog baring its teeth, a coiled snake raising its head and waving back and forth, a hissing cat with its hair standing on end, a bird flaring its bright wings, all trying to look bigger and stronger than they were to ward the danger off before it came to blows. 

For all the anger he attributed to Them, They were not sadistic—if They could scare a threat off and avoid a fight, They still would—They didn’t want to tear Luther apart, though Their desire to protect themselves (him and Them, the both of them) was paramount. 

He couldn’t quite relish the strange, sad comfort that gave him in the moment, too nauseated by the knots They seemed to be tying with his insides. He began to process the collective raised voices of his siblings. 

Luther hadn’t hurt him—it was a solid punch, but nowhere near his full strength. But he’d known just where to strike. 

Ben moaned, trying to bite back the sound as he swallowed convulsively, trying to keep his lunch down. 

“Stop,” he rasped. “Stop, wait, I need a—just give me a minute.” 

“You won’t get a minute in a real fight,” Luther said, the faintest tremor in his composure, so very faint Ben wondered if he was imagining it. “If that’s all it takes, you’d better be careful out there when you leave, or just hope nobody ever bumps into you on the street, accidentally elbows you, and you give yourself away just like that.” 

That hurt more than the punch, more than the queasy cramping that accompanied Their fussing. He had nothing to say to that. Luther was right. 

“What the hell, Luther?” Diego shouted. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, who do you think you are?” 

“Are you okay?” Klaus said, having drawn close. And once upon a time there would have been concern or fury on his brother’s face, but as of late, Klaus hid behind a certain glib coldness, as though all of this were happening in a television show he happened to have wandered onto the set of. 

Ben couldn’t say he blamed him. He knew his brother still cared, underneath. They were all having to learn to hide the pieces of themselves they wanted to keep but were most likely to lose, and for Klaus, that had always meant his gentleness. Ben just hoped he hadn’t hid it so far he couldn’t find it later. 

“I’m fine,” he said. “Guys, it’s fine, seriously, he didn’t hurt me, you know he wouldn’t, I’m just—” He had to pause and swallow when his stomach spasmed. 

Diego shoved his hands against Luther’s chest. Luther, predictably, didn’t budge. “Do you feel tough, huh? You feel real big, hitting him like that? Since when do you do that shit to him? Huh? _Answer_ me. You were always a jerk, but now you’re a bully? Am I just kidding myself here, or what? What happened to you?” 

“I’m fine,” Ben insisted. Were those two going to use him as an excuse to argue? Again? Really? Was he losing it, or did this really just keep happening? 

Maybe if They just wouldn’t cause such a scene when everything really was all right, maybe if they’d listen to him when he said he was fine, maybe if he just wasn’t so damn vulnerable, so easy to get a reaction out of. Like a wind-up toy. Weren’t they all? Wind them up and watch them go. 

Not that it didn’t feel good, how quickly Diego still rushed to his defense, like he always had. It was just that the idea he was doing so now as an excuse to lash out at Luther didn’t sit well with him at all. 

“I’m the only one who seems to be putting any actual thought at all into _your_ idea of leaving,” Luther said. “Are you going to be there every second jumping to his defense? Or Four’s? No. You don’t care what happens to him, to any of them. You’re going to go your own way. But I do care. If that means I have to look like the bad guy, then so be it.” 

Diego shook his head. “He’s really done a number on you, hasn’t he? Must be real hard to see these days, Luther, with your head so far up your ass.” 

“Can we not do this again?” Ben said, wincing and trying to straighten up and not look so goddamn pathetic. “This is—we've already had this argument, don’t you guys see we’re just repeating ourselves?” 

“Well, clearly we didn’t finish it,” said Diego. “You don’t have to defend him, Ben, seriously? Right now, after what he just did?” 

“I’m _fine,”_ he said. “Why can’t you guys ever listen? It always looks worse than it is, this is normal.” 

“Yeah, it’s perfectly normal, you’re right, you’re fine, Ben, this is all perfectly normal,” Diego said, his voice rising. “I swear you’ve almost got it as bad as One sometimes.” 

The sight of the Horror’s continued rippling below his skin, his nauseous pallor and the slim tentacle he had to bat away and stuff back under his shirt probably didn’t lend a whole lot of credibility to his outburst. It was infuriating. They should listen to him, shouldn’t they? It was his body—he knew if it was fine better than they did, at least. Just because he couldn’t always keep himself perfectly composed to their liking shouldn’t undermine what he had to say, should it? Or did he have to attain total, perfect control at all times, keep the body constantly in check, in order to be taken seriously? It wasn’t fair—it wasn’t realistic—it just wasn’t how he worked, and he’d wasted all of this time and all of this energy and made himself so sick and miserable trying to achieve something impossible, and he shouldn’t have had to, should he? Should he? He didn’t look how he should, he didn’t work how he should, fundamentally, down deep at his core. Who was he kidding with all this talk of control? He’d never been in control. He was like somebody trying to hold a forest fire back with a garden hose. 

He was about ready to throw the hose down and walk into the blaze, and that terrified him. 

Or maybe he was just being unreasonable. Maybe he was missing the point. Yes, that was right. He’d missed the point. He was being dumb again, being childish, so easily led astray, so easily confused, he should just be quiet. This wasn’t about him. They were talking about him on the surface but it wasn’t about him at all really, was it? 

He wasn’t the one who made speeches. Wasn’t the one who instigated dramatic turns. He was a secondary character at best—maybe not even that. He knew his place. It was fine. He was glad to have a place at all. 

_Really_. Honest. 

“You never answered me,” Luther said, staring at Allison now. “How do you see this going down? What happy ending are you imagining out there?” 

She stared back at him, her face composed but her eyes heartbroken. “This isn’t you. You don’t make examples out of people, Luther. This isn’t how you make a point.” 

“Maybe you just don’t know me as well as you like to think.” 

Her face hardened. “I guess I don’t.” 

Diego shoved Luther again. “You want to fight somebody? How about you fight someone who’s asking for it, huh? Somebody who’ll fight back? Or are you just another big guy throwing his weight around now, just another asshole like the ones we’re supposed to be stopping?” 

“It really is repetitive, isn’t it?” Five muttered. “If I didn’t know better I’d wonder if...” 

He trailed off, frowning. 

“If you’ve trapped us in some kind of _Groundhog Day_ time loop, I’m going to be really pissed,” Klaus said. 

“You wanna know why you’re really Number One?” Diego said. “It’s not ‘cause you’re so much stronger or smarter or better than the rest of us. Not at all. It’s because he can control you, and you call that a _privilege_. On your own you’d be nothing.” 

“Enough,” Allison said. “What is this solving? I’m leaving.” She turned and reached out to Ben, reflexively seeking to help, only to stop short of actually touching him. He saw the split-second flicker of hesitation on her face as she gauged where to place her hand, and then the hot flush of shame. 

Poor Allison, poor Allison, that must be so difficult—he should say something—apologize—let her know it’s okay, she doesn’t have to touch him or even to look at him, he knows she wants to help, and it’s the thought that counts after all, poor Allison. 

His heart’s just not really in it today. 

She forced herself to wrap one arm around him and rub her hand up and down his back, even though he could see how tight the muscles in her face are, to keep from reacting to the sliding, shifting sensation of his skin under her hands. “Are you okay?” she murmured. 

He shrugged her off in one abrupt motion, stepping back. He saw the surprise on her face, the hurt. He hadn’t meant to move away, to reject her comfort. It was just that everything within him revolted at the idea that taking care of him was a way to prove something. To absolve yourself of something. Like penance. 

He didn’t want to be anybody’s penance. 

“I’m fine,” he said. “I told you I’m fine.” 

And then Diego and Luther were grappling behind them. They moved too quickly for Ben to process what had happened—one minute they were staring each other down, the next Diego had Luther’s arm pinned behind his back and Luther had flipped Diego over his head, Diego’s back hitting the mat with a solid thunk. 

“Stop!” Allison shouted, but it was no good. They were scrabbling at each other, Luther trying to keep Diego pinned on the ground, Diego fighting with all he had to get free. He shoved the heel of his palm up into Luther’s nose, and Luther let go, staggering back, blood splattering across the mat, across Diego’s face. 

Diego scrambled backwards away from Luther, still on the ground, winded, his eyes wide, his chest going up and down fast. Luther had his hands over his face, his shoulders hunched. 

“What is wrong with you?” Allison yelled, stepping forwards and then stopping, unsure of who to go to direct her attention at, if she even wanted to. “What are you doing?” 

She looked on the verge of tears. 

But they just weren’t the kind of people who stopped what they were doing when someone was about to cry, anymore. When had that happened? 

“I’m done,” Diego said, scrambling to his feet and backing away. He wiped idly at the blood on his face and then stared down at his red-streaked hand as though it were a stranger’s. “I’m just—just done.” 

Nobody tried to stop him when he fled the room, the door banging shut behind him. 

“Let me see that,” Allison said, stepping hesitantly closer to Luther. 

He stepped away from her. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” 

“How could you say that?” 

He left, and then there was no more reason to stay, but still they lingered, as though they had all just watched something fall and shatter, and were waiting to see if it would gather itself together again. 

But broken things don’t fix themselves. Don’t ever go back together quite right, the way they were before. The healed bone carries the shape of the break, after years and years. 

When he looked back on that last year or so in the house when they were all more or less together, he saw: 

Vanya on the floor, clutching her stomach, her eyes squinted shut with laughter as she tilted her head back, his own stomach aching with the force of his own laughter, laughing so hard it hurt but not wanting to stop, Five standing on her desk chair, blinking silent tears from his eyes, his entire face twitching and quivering as he tried to maintain a stern expression, doing a frighteningly good impression of Diego and Luther, somehow not at all mean-spirited, just like he had used to do when they were kids, and it wasn’t very funny, and it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, and they just had to keep laughing, a desperate needy edge to their laughter, afraid to stop in case they never started again. 

Diego dressed in black in his torn jeans, head ducked as he played the guitar with clumsy fingers, trying to make his face a mask of stoic nonchalance, all of that falling away the second he looked up at Ben and said “Well, what do you think?” with all the shy, fragile hope of a child. 

Allison coming home after the prom and finding him awake, sitting on the couch curled up with a book and coming to join him, looking ghostly in her dress and smudged makeup in the golden half-light of the lamp, glowing from within with new experiences of the outside world. She whispered to him, wondering aloud if she’d ever really feel like she was living her real life, or if she’d always feel like she was in two places at once. 

Klaus at the top of the stairs in their mother’s heels, the second before he’d fallen. This time he didn’t fall, he was turning in the light, out of view, barely there at all. Klaus slipping out the door, not answering to his own name, vanishing like a trick of the light. 

Luther standing in the courtyard with his arms folded behind his back, shoulders squared and thrown back, watching the rain come down beside their father underneath his black umbrella, mirroring their father’s posture, their father whose face was turned as if he were saying something, and Luther leaning towards the words like a wilting plant in grave need of sunlight. Both of them mute behind the pane of glass Ben watched them through, like two actors in an old silent film, something that had already happened a long time ago which he could in no way influence or change, could only watch and see through to the end. 


	15. Kittens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again dear reader! I hope you are all doing well. You may be enraged to hear that you will meet another OC in this chapter; if so, feel free to yell at me, I promise I can withstand negative feedback. Is this still a thing that upsets people on sight? I just think it’s fun and necessary to see the characters interact with regular people from outside the house! 
> 
> Tw in this chapter for non-graphic off-screen animal death...again. 
> 
> I feel like what I’m trying to do is portray a cross between comic and TV Horror? In the comic it was pretty much just a silly visual gag, gross but harmless. The kids (sans Five) didn’t really kill people, in fact there’s a line in there somewhere from Reggie to the effect of it being beneath them. TV show is just as silly-looking but now it’s drenched in blood and pretty much just there as a plot device to kill a lot of people at once. Both are fine (neither adaptation is about this At All, I am aware of how inconsequential this minor element I’m interested in is) but I think it’s most interesting to lean towards the comic interpretation while landing somewhere in the middle, where I can still think about all the things that interest me in body horror genre stuff without depressing myself with, you know, child murder—interrogating our disgust response, challenging it by pushing safe boundaries of the body, upsetting strict delineations between human/animal/alien/machine etc. But I will save my horror trope essay for another time since this is a fic so on with the story I will be quiet now! 

At the center of his person where most people had a self, he had an empty stomach.

The Horror ate a glass jar full of sand. A small potted succulent ( _ Echeveria elegans _ ). A box of nails. A cat in the alley.

He didn’t hear the kittens crying until it was too late.

He permitted himself one minute to fall apart. Then he made himself put the hurt away and get to work, building a fortress wall of self-loathing around the hurt to keep it contained, brick by gory brick.

Clean cardboard box. Into it, the heating pad Vanya had lent him that he’d never returned and she’d never asked to have back. On top of that, the softest blanket he owned.

That was the best he could do.

It was nearing eleven at night and he saw no one when he ran inside to gather the supplies, which was good—he didn’t have the presence of mind to be stealthy, was wide-eyed and panicked.

Then he got back to the kittens, hidden in a bush in the dark beside the house, and all his momentum vanished. His hands shook. Dizzied, he crouched down, and then fisted his hands in his hair, taking deep breaths.

He had no idea how long he sat like that, staring sightlessly into the leaves, listening to the kittens cry and feeling about as low as he’d ever felt in his life. He couldn’t think. His mind was full of a droning buzz, like television static.

Scuffing footsteps behind him, an approaching heartbeat. He didn’t turn his head, just hunched tighter into himself. They’d keep going and then he’d be alone again and it would be time, really time now, to do something about this.

The footsteps stopped. “Hey...are you okay?”

It was an unfamiliar girl’s voice. Deeper than he’d have expected, almost congested sounding, like she had a cold. He looked up through his fingers. She was young, his own age or close to it. Shaggy hair, big clunky eyeglasses. Ratty sneakers, baggy dark jeans, a big t-shirt with a picture of what looked like...a dancing rat skeleton? 

“Yeah,” he said.

Boy, that sure was convincing! Maybe he had a promising career ahead of him in community theater after all!

He was spending too much time with...actually, all of his siblings were getting snarky these days. He couldn’t think of which of them to blame for his increasingly irritating internal monologue.

She looked around, then bent down lower. “Are you sure? Do you need...help, or something?”

_ Yes. Yes, please help me. _

“No. Thank you.”

“Okay...” Why was she still lingering? “Sorry, um...do you live in there?” she said, nodding her head at the huge, hulking house beside them.

He just stared at her, whatever social graces he possessed having taken their leave of him.

“Sorry, sorry, not trying to stalk you or anything,” she said. “Just, um, I’m headed up there myself, thought if you did, we could go in together...”

His brain wouldn’t work—wouldn't give his mouth words. He’d never seen this person before in his life but his mind kept trying to place her.

She stood and backed away. “Okay. Um...see you.”

When she left, he snapped out of some trance, and began scooping the kittens into the box. Gently, gently...as gently as he’d ever held anything before. He started to cry again, touching them. They were so small, so fragile. He’d never felt like such a monster.

He heard voices by the side door. The one he had been planning on sneaking through. It seemed someone else was doing some sneaking tonight.

He picked up the box and walked slowly so as not to jostle the kittens, his eyes on them the whole time, as though they might burst into flame if he looked away, or fall through a hole in the box he somehow hadn’t noticed, or just disappear.

“—think I might have seen your brother?”

“What?”

“I don’t know, there’s just this guy...”

“—doing?”

That was Diego’s voice, and the stranger’s. The conversation filtered in and out. He ignored it. He had one job now.

He went through the front door to avoid them and then down the stairs to the basement, where he set the box down on the low table and sat down in front of it and went back to putting his face in his hands and clutching his hair. Because that was so helpful. Because that was definitely going to undo what he’d just done, and save these kittens.

And that was where he was when Diego, Vanya, and the stranger came trooping down the stairs and stopped at the threshold, staring at him.

“Oh, so it was your brother after all,” she said. “I was right!”

Ben’s gaze darted between Diego and Vanya. He almost laughed. They really had to stop meeting like this—hadn't they all been here before? He felt like he was going to be sick.

“Ben?” Diego said. “What are you doing?”

He swallowed. His voice sounded like a stranger’s when he spoke. “I don’t know.”

“What’s that box? What’s that noise?” Vanya said, coming closer. Her eyes widened. “Oh my god, you found kittens? Where?”

“Outside.”

“So that’s what you were doing,” said the stranger, laughing. “I totally thought you were like, I don’t know, having a breakdown or something.”

Vanya looked him up and down, and he had the sense that she already knew everything. If only it were so, then he wouldn’t have to speak or explain, and it would be up to her, how to react to him. He felt himself at her mercy. Whatever she did, he’d accept it.

“Kittens? Lemme see,” Diego said, stepping closer.

“Wait,” Vanya said. “Um, I think maybe—maybe you should wait upstairs with Jamie, just for a minute, Two.”

At the sound of his number, like it was some kind of code, Diego’s back straightened from its slouch and his face grew serious and alert. “What?” He looked at Ben, looked more closely this time. “What happened?”

Diego made to kneel closer, and Ben hugged the box to his chest, blocking their view of the few splattered stains of blood on his t-shirt. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“Careful with the kittens,” Vanya blurted, and then shut her mouth quickly, too quickly. “I just meant—because you grabbed the box too fast,” she murmured.

“If you found those outside, we should put them back,” said the stranger—Jamie. “The mother’s probably still around, she’ll come back.”

“No,” said Ben.

“Seriously, it’s like a thing. People think kittens are abandoned and bring them to the shelter, but the mama cat was there all along, you just have to wait a few hours and see if she comes back.”

“I don’t think she’s coming back.”

“Are you sure?” said Diego. “Like, did somebody run her over, or...”

At least everybody didn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that he was a monster and had let the Horror eat it, had shut his eyes tight and given in to the pressure they pressed on his organs, his skin, had pretended he was somewhere else, someone else, while they made quick merciful work of their prey. That was something.

Sure, he wanted to say. Exactly. Yes. That’s exactly what happened.

“Maybe.”

“Can you just take her upstairs and give us a minute?” Vanya murmured.

Diego, to his enduring credit, nodded and listened to Vanya. He turned and muttered something to the stranger and led the way up the stairs.

Jamie lingered for a second on the bottom step. “Hope you feel better,” she called back, her voice falling flat and awkward. Then she scurried up the steps after Diego.

Vanya knelt on the ground beside him. “What can I do?” she murmured.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“What happened? It’s okay. You can tell me.”

“I just...I know it’s awful,” he whispered. “But I let Them. I let Them. It’s not Their fault. They didn’t—They never want to hurt anybody, Vanya. I know that might be hard for you to believe, it might seem impossible, but it’s the truth. They aren’t...cruel. I know I’m horrible but it’s not Their fault. But now they’ve done this and I can’t, I can’ t—and They don’t understand why it’s bad, why I’m upset, or at least I don’t think They do, and I don’t know how to explain, or if I can. Even if They could talk, I don’t know if I would understand Them. That’s what scares me. Or—that’s one thing. Lots of things scare me. Like how we all have to stay or leave, and everything’s going to change no matter what we do.”

He couldn’t bring himself to look at her, but she was right there in the corner of his eye. She had listened to all of that, and she was still here.

He just couldn’t fathom how he was going to say goodbye to her. To any of them.

Vanya sighed. “Do you want space, or can I...”

She bumped her elbow against his and held one arm out. He leaned into the hug, wrapping one arm loosely around her. It was awkward, trying to hug while sitting on the floor with a box of kittens still hugged to his chest, but they did their best.

“That’s a lot,” she mumbled. “That’s a lot for one person to be keeping inside for so long. And I get the feeling there’s a lot more you still haven’t said.”

“It’s not...it’s fine.”

“That’s what you always say.”

“It’s always fine.”

“It’s not right now.”

He shrugged, dislodging her. She pulled away but remained sitting beside him. “It will be. It has to be, right? I mean what are things if they aren’t fine?”

“You aren’t horrible.”

He looked down into the box of kittens and remembered there were little lives at stake, something greater than his emotional breakdown. That could be put on hold. That could be stuffed down into the hollow at his center and forgotten.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with them,” he said. “I. ..I made them orphans, oh my god,” he said, his face crumpling. He pinched himself hard on the thin skin on the inside of his wrist. They didn’t like that. Ridges gathered on his arm, expanding and contracting around the pinch, as if to keep him from hurting themselves again. “Who’s that girl? What are you guys doing anyway?”

“That’s Jamie. We met her at a show a couple months ago. We’re still getting to know her, but she’s pretty cool. You don’t have to worry about her. She’s...a pretty understanding person, I think.”

“You guys have shows? I didn’t know that.”

Vanya flushed. “Someone else’s show. We don’t play. Yet.”

“So she...knows about us?”

“We don’t lie to her. She knows more than Allison’s friends. She knows whose kids we are, and what that means, who that makes us. But we don’t really talk about it too much, and she’s not nosy about it. At least, she hasn’t been yet.”

“So she...she doesn’t know who I am. About Them.”

“No. I mean...she knows you’re our brother, so she knows the gist, I guess. But not that.”

“Okay.” There was more he wanted to know—like just how many shows had she and Diego snuck out to see, and could he maybe come along some time? But that would do for now. He still had that hollowed-out feeling that followed emotional upheaval, like crying had momentarily drained him of his feelings. It was almost peaceful. He could begin to think again.

“I don’t really know what kittens need.”

“Me neither. Maybe we can take them to a shelter.”

“No,” he said, curling his arms protectively around the box. “I have to take care of them.”

“You just said you don’t know how...”

“But I did this. I should be the one to save them.”

She sighed. “Then you’d better start looking up what to do.”

There came a knock, and then Diego was peering at them from the stairs. “Hey...you guys good down here?”

“Yeah,” said Vanya. “How’s Jamie?”

“You know her, she’s fine, just rolling with it. We made popcorn. Can we come down? Is that cool, Ben?”

“Yeah, but I gotta go, I really need to—”

Jamie appeared next to Diego on the stairs, holding a big red bowl of popcorn and waving her phone in the air. “My friend’s cat just had kittens last year so I’ve been texting her and I can help you figure out what to do with them if you want?”

“Really?” Ben said.

“I think we’d be better off taking them to the shelter,” Vanya said. “They’ll know how to take care of them there.”

“But I need to do it,” Ben said, hugging the box.

Jamie frowned. “Most shelters are really understaffed? Lots of kittens actually die there. They’re really needy and they just don’t always have enough people, so...if you think you can take care of them, they might be better off here, at least until they’re weaned and don’t need to be bottle-fed anymore. Can I come take a look?”

He nodded, and she and Diego came and joined them on the ground. “I’ll send my friend a picture and see what she says,” Jamie said, lowering her phone into the box to photograph the kittens. “They’re tiny, but their eyes and ears are open, so that’s good. I’d guess they’re maybe...four weeks old? But I’m not like, an expert or anything.”

“You know a hell of a lot more than we do,” Diego said.

Ben stared at her as though she were a lifeline. “Do you think they’ll be okay?”

“I’m not a vet or anything...but if you’re willing to take care of them, you can probably give them the best chance they have.”

“I am.”

“Awesome,” she said, smiling at him. She had a fairly pronounced overbite, he noticed. Slight gap between her teeth. Despite not knowing her, and his general unease around strangers, he found her genuine and easy to trust. “I’m Jamie, by the way. Don’t know if they told you that already.”

“I’m Ben. I...don’t know if they told you that either.”

“Nope, you guys have way too many siblings for me to remember all the names without having faces to go with them. But it’s nice to meet you.”

“You too.”

“So. ..according to my friend and the Internet, we’ll need to get kitten formula. They have it at the pet store. They need to be fed every few hours—even at night.”

He nodded, hanging off her every word. “Okay. I can do that.”

“It’s really important you don’t miss a feeding. We should probably go now and get the formula. Kittens sleep quietly. They’re crying, so they’re probably cold or hungry.”

“I put a heating pad in the box,” he said, uncertain.

“Like one for people?”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe take that out. There’s special cat ones, we can buy that at the store, too. I don’t know if this one might burn them or not.”

“Oh my god,” mumbled, yanking the cord out of the wall and carefully sliding the heating pad out from under the kittens. “Did I burn them? Do they look okay?”

“No, no, you didn’t burn them, it’s okay—we really should get them some food though, we don’t know when they last ate. The closest pet store is nearby, we can catch a bus.”

He looked up at her, forcing himself to meet her gaze for the first time. “Um. Thank you.”

She smiled. Her smile was kind and he saw no judgement in her eyes. “Of course, man.”

She spoke with such ease, as if it were the simplest thing in the world, dropping all her plans for the evening, consoling a distraught stranger with blood on his shirt, hanging out with them, even knowing who they were, what they were. He blinked, staring, trying to make sense of her. She wasn’t anything like he’d thought she’d be—a stranger, that is.

“You don’t have to stay,” Vanya said, apologetic. “Sorry.”

“You kidding?” Jamie said, with the same easy grin. “Like I’ve got anything better to do than rescue some kittens. Plus, we’re still hanging out. It doesn’t matter to me what we do.”

Diego and Jamie took the bus to the pet store while Vanya stayed with Ben, watching over the kittens until they returned with formula and bottles. They fed the mewling kittens until they were quiet and sated and he started to let himself think that maybe they would pull through and be okay, and that made his eyes get misty again, but nobody said anything about it.

Jamie stayed for another couple of hours, and then Diego took the bus home with her and it was just Vanya and him again.

“I’m going to get some sleep,” she said. “Do you need anything? Want me to take a turn feeding them tonight?”

He shook his head. “I’ll set an alarm. I’ve got it.”

She lingered in the doorway. “You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah. Of course I am.” Still she looked uncertain, reluctant to leave him, and he had a terrible thought— _ she doesn’t want to leave me alone with them. _ “They’re safe with me,” he said, curling his arms protectively around the box. “I promise.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m not worried about them.”

He didn’t reply, and she didn’t push. He took the box into his room and set alarms he didn’t end up needing; he slept only fitfully, in half hour intervals between long periods of restless waking. The Horror was quiet and meek beneath his skin, its discontent mingling with his exhaustion to produce an almost rocking sensation inside him. He felt seasick. Was he imagining Their emotions? Did he only want it to feel things that remotely resembled what he felt? Did he need it to be like him so badly he imagined it having qualities that were simply not there?

It was dangerous to anthropomorphize something inhuman. Doing so could get you hurt. It could give you false assurance. Your idea of reality might only be a fantasy. Elephants put their heads in the laps of humans not to cuddle like a cat or a dog, but to grind you to death with their foreheads. He’d read that somewhere, some online article about human misconceptions of animal behavior. He was woefully out of his depth if he began to assume that Their thoughts and feelings had to correlate to his own. They didn’t owe him comprehensibility any more than any other facet of the universe did.

And yet, wasn’t it equally ignorant to think that They were totally alien? That he had no chance of fathoming the slightest thing about Their behavior? They shared a life. They knew him in ways no other being ever had, or ever would.

There had to be some common ground here.

They wanted to eat when They were hungry—that was one thing. Although Their hunger was so very different than his own. They liked to be safe, didn’t like to be hurt.

What else...

Was that all? They weren’t like other creatures. They were something else. What if there really was no way to bridge the gap of understanding? He couldn’t even imagine what it was like inside the minds of regular animals. How could he begin to understand the Horror’s experience of consciousness?

But he could try, couldn’t he?

What if he seemed as strange to Them as he did to Them? They ate meat at dinner and so did everyone else, sans Vanya. There were the mice and rabbits in training—and his own corresponding disgust and fear and sadness, but also his forcing Them out, per their father’s directions. There was the fish and his grief. There was Number Eight, who was off limits for eating, but whom They were still curious about, and his affection for her as a pet. There was the rat and the cat he’d let Them take, with reluctance and a certain measure of shame, but not much resistance. And now the kittens and his overwhelming loathing of themselves.

He could see how he might be sending mixed signals here.

But maybe he didn’t want to understand. Didn’t want to understand, and become more like Them by understanding. Didn’t want any common kinship with the Horror, other than the unavoidable fact that he and it were conjoined. Not by choice. Didn’t that make him more sympathetic? A reluctant monster was surely more easily forgiven than an unabashed one. Maybe humanity would never fully take him in, but if he remained dogged in his determination to be loyally human, to deny and abhor the parts of himself that weren’t, maybe he’d be allowed to remain on the fringes, close but not quite. Those were the sympathetic monsters, weren’t they? The ones at constant war with themselves, who found their own monstrousness loathsome, who wound up destroying themselves rather than be alive and inhuman, and were considered all the more noble and tragic for it. Those were the sort people could pity. The other kind were hunted and shunned. If they didn’t see you trying to destroy yourself, they would have to do it for you, and out came the torches and pitchforks. 

If you couldn’t be good, you could always be dead. And maybe then someone would say kind things about you. They would tell stories, the sort that come with neat morals at the end. They might even build a statue. They might even call what had happened a tragedy, and create a whole myth about you and how you’d fought the good fight as long as you could, and hadn’t you really been the best of them, been good at heart all along? They might use the story they told themselves about you to make their own lives more meaningful, more significant. To prop up the tragedy of themselves, to punish themselves for the ways in which they weren’t good, but from a safe distance, because you had already died on the altar of self-sacrifice, and now nobody else had to. And maybe then you wouldn’t be yourself any more at all—just the story they told about you, and how good you’d been, now that you were dead and it was safe to say so, because you couldn’t hurt anyone ever again, not even yourself.

The shadows grew dark under his eyes, but he wouldn’t let anyone else help him with the kittens, even though everyone offered, in their own way. He woke at least twice a night to feed them, ducked into his room between classes, ran straight after training so as not to keep them waiting.

Nobody looked at him askance. Nobody made any sideways comments about how he’d come to have a box full of kittens.

“I told them you found them abandoned in the alley,” Vanya said. “And that you were a little shaken up about it, so not to give you a hard time or anything.”

“Thanks.”

“I wasn’t sure what you’d want me to say.”

“That’s fine. That’s good. Thank you.”

She nodded curtly and left.

What to think about how she’d automatically lied for him? That she thought lying for him was what he’d want? Sometimes he thought that Vanya’s unquestioning willingness to cover for him stemmed more from a desire to feel included in something than anything else. The thought made him feel guilty, as though he were taking advantage of her somehow—as if her profound loneliness made her the one person who couldn’t afford to shun him, no matter how disgusted she might be.

At any rate, it seemed to have worked on Allison, at least, who spent a lot of time playing with the kittens but gave him no more searching looks than he expected. No more suspicion than he anticipated, no more than he’d seen in her eyes when she found him holding Number Eight by himself.

“What are you going to do with them, when they’re all grown up?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I hope I’ll find good homes for them.”

“We could keep one.”

“What?”

Her voice was purposefully light and airy. Like it was no big deal, nothing implied. She looked up at him, one kitten in her lap. “You know. When we move out. It would be nice, to have a pet.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Don’t you think so?”

He looked down at the kittens, one of them crawling over his legs, another nibbling on his finger. Was she was serious? She really wanted to move in together when they left? She wasn’t just going to vanish?

How did he feel about keeping one of the kittens? It would only be a constant reminder.

It was what he deserved, he supposed.

“When you say ‘we’ should keep one...what do you mean? You mean you want to still live together?”

“Well, yeah...don’t you?”

“I know you’re applying to schools in California,” he mumbled, unable to meet her eyes.

She was quiet only for a beat before saying, “That doesn’t mean I’m going to go.”

“But then...why apply?” Words continued tumbling out of his mouth, tripping over himself in his eagerness not to sound clingy or desperate. “Not that I don’t think you should—if that’s really what you want to do, I think you should go, you know? I don’t want to—you shouldn’t hold yourself back, if that’s what you want. Really.”

“I just want options,” she murmured. “I just wondered if I’d get in, that’s all, and...and it’ll feel nice to have a choice, even when I choose not to go.”

“Oh.” He thought about that for a moment. “I guess I understand that, even though I...sort of feel the opposite. I wish I had less decisions to make.”

She laughed softly. “It’s not easy.”

“No, it’s really not.”

“You could apply too, you know. To schools in California.” She looked up at him, and he stared back, at a loss. She rushed to go on. “You could apply anywhere, anywhere you wanted, I mean. You don’t have to stay in state just to be close to home, just to be with the rest of us. You could go anywhere you wanted.”

“But there’s no where I want to go. I don’t even know anything about other places, where would I even want to go?”

“But you could. It’s an option.”

He got a sinking feeling then. “Do you...do you want me to go somewhere else?”

“I want you to do what you want. That’s all.”

“If I...if I left home, went further away, it’d be...be easier for you, to commit to going to California, wouldn’t it.”

“No...no, that’s not what this is about.”

“Don’t stay just for me,” he said, running one finger softly along the back of the nearest kitten. He dangled the drawstring of his hoodie in front of it, letting it bat at the string.

“I’m not. Seriously, Ben.”

“I know...I know what Luther said, but you shouldn’t base your decision on that. I’ll be okay. I—I won’t be alone, I’m sure someone will stay—Klaus, or Diego, or Vanya, somebody.”

“Do you want to talk about what Luther said?”

He shrugged, staring at the kittens in his lap. “I don’t know. What’s there to say?”

“Do you think about it a lot? Does it bother you?”

“Well...yeah. Of course I think about it. I have to. He was right.”

“He wasn’t right.”

“Just because it wasn’t nice doesn’t mean it wasn’t true. I really don’t know how people will...I don’t know anything, really. But, um...I can’t be the only person who feels like that, leaving home for the first time. At least I don’t think so. I mean—okay, nobody else might have the same reasons, but—other people go through this, and they turn out fine. Right?”

“Right...but you do want to go, right? I mean...not just because the rest of us are?”

“I just don’t want to do missions anymore,” he whispered. “I just want to...be allowed to just...exist, I guess. And I feel like that’s not going to happen here. But other than that I don’t really know what I want. I just don’t want to be alone.”

“You won’t be,” she said. “I promise.”

Her promise both comforted and made him feel guilty. He didn’t want to manipulate her. Didn’t want her to stay, just because she was worried for him.

But at the same time, he couldn’t lie to her. Not convincingly, anyway. He was scared to be without her, without any of them. He didn’t know who he was on his own.

He was a collection of all the ways the others had influenced him—all of his best parts belonged to them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since writing this and starting to actually read more tua fic, I have noticed a funny trend of Ben-saves-stray-cats. So...here's my horrible version of that, I guess! I feel like this chapter could make people mad either for cat death or OC. Or maybe no one cares. Also, in case you are sensitive like me and wounded from reading too many pre-canon stories culminating in Ben's horrible death, I just want to be quite clear...no matter how much or how heavy-handedly I foreshadow his imminent demise...he lives in this one.
> 
> Well, I hope you are all hanging in there, being kind to yourselves and one another since other people are all we have. Take care! <3 


	16. Wildlife

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a spider in this one.
> 
> Being so short on house drama, the Academy turns to one of the few outsiders in their social circle to provide the "hot goss," as it were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello, dear reader! Sorry for the wait—got busy with work/classes/life stuff. I hope you’re all doing well. I’m a little nervous about this chapter, so I’m just not going to say too much about it and see if anyone wants to yell at me in the comments. As always, thank you so much for all your lovely comments, they mean the world to me! But also, regardless of if you comment or not, thank you so much for reading!

Someone was knocking at the front door. Ben ignored it. Someone else would answer them if it was important, or more likely, the prankster or gutsy journalist would give up and go away—it had nothing to do with him. He had one more chance to take his college entrance exams. His scores were just okay. Barely okay. He thought he was competent enough to squeak by in all the subjects—it was just that something about taking tests had always scrambled his mind and made him forget everything he’d ever known. If he could get his nerves under control, could move a little faster, so he had time to get to all of the questions, he just knew he could bump the score up. Even a modest improvement would help. 

He just didn’t know what he’d do, if all his siblings got accepted and he didn’t. Klaus had barely studied and still scored higher than him, and he didn’t even seem particularly enthused about the idea of going to college at all. He’d just been curious how he would score. Ben didn’t begrudge his brother that ease—he just wished some of it would rub off on him. 

Someone knocked on his door, and since it was cracked, it swung open. “Ben,” Klaus called, his voice loud and carrying down the whole hall. “There’s a _girl_ here to see you.” 

“What?” he said, looking up from his prep book, annoyed. “Klaus, I’m kind of busy.” 

“Okay. I’ll tell her you’re too much of a nerd to be worth hanging out with.” 

“What girl?” 

“I don’t know, you tell me. I didn’t know you even knew anybody.” 

“I don’t.” 

He didn’t know anyone besides Allison’s friends, who’d never be here asking for him...except for Vanya and Diego’s friend. What was her name again? Jessie, Jackie, Jenny... 

Jamie. 

He got up and went downstairs, Klaus trailing behind him. He stared in surprise, stopping short when he saw her standing by the front door. 

She grinned at him, a little shy but sincere, raising one hand in a slow wave. “Hey there.” 

“Oh. Hi. Sorry, I think my brother got confused,” he said, shooting a glare at Klaus. “I’ll go get Vanya and Diego for you.” 

“Oh. That’s okay, I mean, it’s not his fault, I asked if you were here—I mean, yeah, I’m here to hang with them, but I kind of thought I’d see how the kittens were doing first? If that’s okay?” 

“Oh. Of course, sure. Of course that’s okay. 

“You sure? Sorry, I guess I sort of barged in on you here,” she said, laughing. “If you’re busy I can always see the little guys another time. If that’s all right.” 

“No, no, I’m not busy.” 

“So who was that five seconds ago who told me you were too busy to answer the door?” said Klaus, grinning. 

“Shut up,” he muttered. “Um...well, the kittens are up here.” 

He led her up the stairs and into his room. He left the door open and could tell Klaus was lingering out there, spying. Not that Ben blamed him. He’d never exactly had a guest before. 

He’d bought a playpen to house the kittens in, which took up most of the floorspace. He unzipped the side so the kittens could come toddling out. Jamie cooed and grinned, picking up one of the cat toys and trailing it along the floor, trying to entice them to play. 

“Aw, hey little guys! It’s only been, what, a couple weeks? Look how big you’re getting! How’ve they been?” 

“Good, I think,” he said, watching the kittens play with the same nervous tension he always did, like he expected them to break at any second. “I did need to use the eye-dropper to feed one of them for a while, but they all eat fine from the bottles now.” 

“You can probably start mixing kitten food into their diet. But I guess you probably know that. Vanya says you’ve pretty much been taking care of them on your own.” 

Vanya talked about him to this stranger? What else had she said? 

Probably nothing important. It was fine. He trusted Vanya’s discretion. Why did he care what this person thought of him, anyway? She was Vanya and Diego’s friend, not his. 

“Yeah...I just hope I’m doing everything right.” 

“They seem healthy and happy to me. It’s a lot of work, taking care of four kittens. You must really like animals.” 

He shrugged, helping one of the kittens trying to climb his leg, lifting her into his lap. “I guess.” 

She laughed like she thought he was joking. He felt his face warm up. He didn’t know how to talk to her. He’d never had to talk to a stranger one on one before. He’d barely had to talk to one with all his siblings around, where he could fade into the background. What if he said something really weird? What if he already had? 

At least he was well hidden in his baggy jeans and hoody. The last thing he wanted to do was be responsible for sending Vanya and Diego’s new friend running screaming out of the house because she’d caught a glimpse of the Horror, which was mercifully quiet and still. Now and then he felt it creeping along below the skin, but it wasn’t being too insistent about it. Still. He couldn’t let his guard down. 

“So like, you know you’ll have to bring them to the vet and get their shots and get them fixed and all that?” 

He nodded. “I actually took them last week, they got worm medicine and stuff.” Allison had done him a big favor by going to the vet’s with him, to...smooth things over. 

“Of course, yeah, sorry.” She laughed. “Wow, I just come in here and like, take over.” 

“No, no—I appreciate the help. I don’t really know what I’m doing, I just try and follow the directions you give me and what I read.” 

“Well, it seems like you got this under control to me.” 

He didn’t. At all. But it was nice that she thought so. 

He hoped he could get Allison to do him one more favor when it was time to get them vaccinated. Somehow their father hadn’t found out about the kittens yet—or if he did know, he had chosen not to do anything about it. Yet. If Allison could just help him out with the vet, he thought he’d be about all clear and could start to relax a little bit. They’d make it after all. 

“Seriously, thank you for all your help,” he said. “You, um...when you met me, that wasn’t exactly...the best night of my life. But you really helped. So, thanks.” 

“We’ve all been there,” she said, with her earnest, sort of goofy grin, a little crooked, so sincere and disarming. No, he thought. No, we really haven’t all been there—but he found himself smiling back. “I’m just glad I could help, even if it was only a little. Do they have names yet?” 

“No... I mean, they sort of have nicknames, just so I can call them something, but...not real names yet.” 

He refused to name them Nine, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve. That may have been cute once, but they at least deserved original names. 

“Well, if you want help coming up with names, hit me up. But I’m sure you’ll come up with good ones.” 

“Maybe I should just let whoever adopts them name them.” 

“They’re your babies though,” she said, lifting one of the kittens into her lap. “Are you going to give them all away?” 

“I don’t know yet. I don’t think our dad would really want a cat...but maybe we’ll keep one, when we move out...” 

“Maybe I could take care of one. We already have a cat at home, but I'll miss her when I leave.” 

“Really? You’d take one?” 

“Sure. You’ve already done all the hard work,” she said, grinning. 

“Do you have a lot of pets? Besides the cat.” 

“There’s the cat and then I also have a tarantula.” 

“A...what?” 

She laughed. “Uh, yeah. Her name’s Queen Mab, Mab for short—it's like a Shakespeare thing, ‘cause my stepdad’s a huge nerd. She’s really his pet more so than mine, but whatever.” 

“You have a tarantula...as a pet?” 

“You’ve never heard of that before?” she said, laughing, like _he_ was the weird one. 

“I mean, I guess I’ve heard of it, like on TV, but not in real life!” 

“Well, she’s a Mexican redknee tarantula and Dad sort of rescued her. Apparently, this guy he knew way back when wanted an exotic pet but didn’t really get that a tarantula can be a twenty-year commitment.” 

“Twenty years?” 

“Yeah, crazy, right? Mab’s an old lady now, but she’s had a good long life.” 

“What do you... _do_ with a pet tarantula?” 

“Well, they are venomous, and they can bite, so she’s not the kind of pet you cuddle. Not that she’d probably even want to cuddle. She’s really interesting to watch. I don’t know. You just appreciate that she’s there, doing her thing. We can’t really release her, so the best thing to do is just take good care of her.” 

“That’s...um. Neat?” He tried to suppress a shudder, imagining cuddling a tarantula. Jamie looked at him, a faint smile on her face. “You don’t like spiders.” 

He grimaced. “I’m not...crazy about them.” 

There was really no other creature that triggered his gag reflex on sight. He had no idea why—it had just always been that way. He was embarrassed and ashamed of his reaction to them, and had tried to fight it down, had made himself watch them crawling up the sides of the bathtub, a sort of DIY exposure therapy, but looking at them, even thinking about them, still made something in his stomach clench and his skin prickle. 

“Not too many people are,” she said. “But they’re actually really cool animals. Like, okay, tarantulas don’t make typical spiderwebs, but they do spin silk, and there’s this new research coming out that says a spider’s web is sort of like an extension of its brain? It’s called extended cognition, I think. Sort of like how if you write something down, that’s like a piece of your mind now on the paper.” 

“That is interesting.” 

And it was. Truly. He appreciated that information. It just didn’t erase the need to gag when he thought about a spider’s eight spindly legs crawling along his skin, it’s eyes, it’s mouth, the way they moved. It wasn’t a rational fear, it went beyond an aversion to something dangerous, it was involuntary and reflexive, like a leg jerking at the tap of a hammer just above the knee. 

And the idea that this incurable, visceral, gut reaction of horror was what people felt when they looked at Them— 

He tried not to think about it. 

What if there was no getting around disgust? What if, for all the intellectual appreciation you could cultivate, all the empathy, the horror remained? What if sometimes it was no use, plumbing the depths of what it meant to be afraid, picking apart the whats and whys—what if the roots ran too deep, and the fear could not be rooted out and overcome? What if repulsion could not be reconciled or reckoned with? What if some things were felt so deeply within the body that it did not matter how sympathetic the heart or mind had become—the stomach still rebelled, rejected the object of horror? 

Jamie laughed. “It’s okay. Lots of people don’t like spiders.” 

“But I don’t _want_ to not like spiders.” 

Her head tilted as she studied him, a question in her eyes. Had he said something wrong? Or was it the way he’d said it—all too earnestly, like too much was at stake? 

“What do you mean?” 

“Well, just—I feel bad, you know? There’s no good reason to be so creeped out. I’d rather see them like you do.” 

“Well. Maybe you can come meet Mab, and let her be your spider sponsor.” 

He forced himself to smile, as if the idea didn’t make him want to be sick. “Sure.” 

He didn’t even really register in the moment that he was being invited over to someone’s house. 

Footsteps bound up the stairs, and then Vanya and Diego stood in the doorway. 

“Hey. We didn’t know you were here,” Diego said. 

“Just had to say hi to these guys first,” she said, lifting a kitten off her lap. “And you, I guess,” she said, grinning at Ben. 

If he sort of trailed along behind the three of them all day, like the annoying little sibling who just wouldn’t go away, at least nobody had the heart to tell him to leave them alone. 

Of course, Dad found out about the kittens. 

It came up one morning at breakfast. Ben was reading and startled badly when out of nowhere their father said, “Number Six.” 

His fork rattled against his plate and in his haste to sit up straight and shut his book, he nearly knocked Vanya’s glass of water over. “Yes?” 

“I was waiting for you to address the animals you’ve been keeping in your room with me, but I’ve come to conclude that you have no intention of doing so. So this is me, addressing it.” 

He flicked his eyes around the table, meeting a mixture of sympathetic and avoidant gazes. “They were all on their own,” he blurted. “They would’ve died if I hadn’t taken care of them.” 

“Mm. Yes. I have no doubt they would have. Small animals tend to do that.” 

“Well...so...that’s why I had to take them in.” 

“How charitable. I’m sure they’re very grateful,” his father said, peering for a second over his paper at Ben, whose face burned under that piercing, knowing gaze. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t ask for permission,” he mumbled. 

“How old are you now, Number Six?” 

Ben blinked at the pages of the paper which had returned to obscure his father’s face. “Seventeen?” 

“Speak up.” 

“Seventeen.” 

Hargreeves folded the paper and momentarily lowered it, looking around the table and addressing all of them. “Old enough, I would think, to understand the important distinction between obedience and dependency. Thoughtless rebellion and blind lackeyism are equal signs of a weak mind. I have sought to foster order and discipline in you children—never dependency. I find that the lowest form of parasitism, and I have no use for parasites.” 

Ben flinched. He couldn’t help it. That word, out of his father’s mouth, directed even in the most sideways way at himself, felt damning. 

But then Hargreeves went on. “You didn’t ask permission because you didn’t believe it would be forthcoming. You aren’t sorry for that action, so don’t make empty apologies. You took it upon yourself to make a decision, without first stopping to ask for the permission of everyone you could find. A first—I was beginning to doubt you had it in you. I trust you possess the discretion and good judgement to know when it is time to decide, and when it is time to obey. I’ve taught you well enough to trust in that, I should think. Any shortcomings from here on out I can only attribute to an unfortunate but irremediable lack of potential on your part.” 

He still couldn’t tell if he was being scolded or...well, not praised, exactly, that would be going a step too far, but...acknowledged, maybe. At least it wasn’t an outright reprimand. There was never any doubt, when that was the case. 

At times like these, he considered it best to remain silent. He’d only say something stupid and bring more unwanted attention on himself at this point. 

And Hargreeves had unfolded his paper once more anyway, apparently done delivering roundabout lectures for the morning. He turned the page, eyes scanning swiftly left to right, and added, so offhandedly it seemed like an entirely unrelated point: “You understand this isn’t a shelter, and I can’t have strays running all over the place. So long as you continue to be as discrete as you’ve so far managed, the little beasts can stay until you find them proper lodgings, or get bored and turn them back out, I suppose. Clearly, you’ve taken more responsibility for them than I’d have imagined you capable of. See to it that remains the case, and that they don’t distract you from your studies, or I will have to intervene.” 

It was an unexpected victory, of sorts. Or was it? Somehow, their transgressions felt more like victory when they were secret. Once accepted, with all the ensuing exceptions and ultimatums and commentary, they became just another task—another challenge, incorporated into training, because that’s what everything was, in some way, even the things that didn’t seem to be so, at first. 

Of course, there was no victory here. Just a box full of helpless animals. 

He was reading on his bed when Vanya came knocking. 

“Hey,” she said. “Jamie’s asking for kitten pictures. Can I come in?” 

“Oh. Yeah, of course.” 

Vanya knelt by the kitten playpen. By blocking off the staircase, he’d started to be able to let them have free reign of the hall outside, and any bedrooms with open doors. He never could relax while they were exploring; he spent the whole time tense, distracted by constantly checking in on their heartbeats, making sure he could still feel them, that they weren’t going too fast or too slow or vanished altogether. 

“How is she?” he asked, sliding off the bed to sit beside her, watching her take pictures. 

“Good,” Vanya said. “She actually asked me to give you her number, so you could send the pictures yourself, but you know. Had to tell her you didn’t really text. Here, hold these guys,” she said, plopping two kittens into his lap. He gathered them in his arms on reflex and she snapped a picture, smiling at the screen of her phone. Her phone. Why did she look so natural typing on that phone when he had hardly touched his? 

Then he remembered that he had no one to call. Anyone he could want to talk to was already here, in the house. 

“What are you saying to her?” he said, leaning over to peer at the screen. 

Vanya nudged him away. “Telling her the kittens are doing good with you totally spoiling them all the time.” 

“Wait,” he said. “But I do have a phone.” It was the same one they’d all received when they were thirteen—for emergencies. (All of them, except for Vanya. Vanya, who, having never been in an emergency, had no need for one. She’d had to acquire her own, through no-doubt humiliating negotiations with Allison.) It was a sturdy, blocky thing of their father’s design that probably could survive being dropped out of a plane, it was so solid. It sat gathering dust on the topmost bookshelf. 

Now he got it down and rejoined Vanya on the floor, looking at her expectantly. 

“Really?” she said. “Are you serious?” 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” 

“I don’t know, I guess I just didn’t think you’d be into this kind of thing,” she said, taking his phone and navigating to the contacts. There were seven of them—his siblings and his father. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said. 

She shrugged, handing him the phone back. The screen blinked at him on the new contact page. Jamie Morales, ten digits. He stared at it in fascination. This had never happened before. It felt like a lot of power, having that number. He could talk to someone outside the house. 

“You’ve just never been big on meeting people, I guess,” she said. 

That wasn’t fair. How was he supposed to meet people? He didn’t know the first thing about talking to other people. He got all of the social interaction he needed—sometimes more than he wanted, living with all of them. What more could he want from strangers who didn’t know the first thing about him? 

“It’s not like I don’t want to meet people,” he mumbled. “I just don’t really...know how.” 

“Well, Jamie’s really nice, so don’t be shy, if you want to talk to her.” 

“Really? I can just do that?” 

“Yeah, it was her idea,” Vanya said, shrugging. “Like I said, she’s nice, she’ll be anybody’s friend.” 

She’d be _anybody’s_ friend, meaning—even yours. He didn’t think Vanya had meant that to sound scathing. He was sure he was just being too sensitive. Still. Maybe this was a bad idea. 

“What should I say?” 

“I don’t know—hi? You don’t _have_ to say anything, if you don’t want to.” 

“I do,” he said, too quickly. “I just don’t know what. What do people...say, to each other?” 

“Don’t overthink it, you’ll make it weird.” 

“That’s why I’m asking you for help,” he said, pained. “I don’t want it to be weird.” 

“I don’t know...it’s not like I’m the master of conversation, you know. I guess when we met her, we just talked about our interests. Like about music and stuff. That’s still pretty much what we talk about, nothing too deep or personal or anything.” 

“So, she...she really doesn’t know who we are, right?” 

“She knows who our Dad is and she’s seen where we live. We haven’t really told her anything specific, but we also haven’t tried to hide anything—I'm pretty sure she knows the general idea, unless she’s been living under a rock.” 

“But like...she doesn’t know who’s who? Like...you just told her our names...our _name_ names, not...the other stuff?” 

“No way, I totally make a habit of introducing all my siblings by their stupid shitty code names. Seriously? I mean, come on.” 

“You...didn’t though, right?” 

“No, Ben.” 

“Okay, okay, sorry. I’m just making sure.” 

Her voice softened. “I get it. I really do, you know. It’s not like I want to be friends with someone who’s already got ideas about who we are, before they even get to know us. Honestly, if she did, I don’t know if I’d really be hanging out with her. Hard to befriend someone who already thinks they know more than they do about us or our family.” 

On that, they were in complete agreement. 

Jamie didn’t know about Them. Jamie only knew him, by himself—she thought that was all. She’d never seen Them. 

He didn’t know how to feel about that. It was like holding something new and rare and not being able to do anything with it at all because he was so aware of how easily he could break it. 

He stared down at the little blinking message box for a long time, wondering what to say. What to say to this person, who for some reason was nice to him, and willing to speak to him, this person who _didn’t know_ about the Horror. It made him almost giddy. He thought about what to say all through dinner, and then curled up at the end of the sofa in the library, phone clumsily hidden behind a book, shoulders hunched as he tapped out a message and sent it before he could lose his nerve. 

He ended up sending a picture he’d taken of Vanya earlier, with all four kittens climbing on top of her. 

“Hi Jamie! This is Ben, Diego and Vanya’s brother. Vanya said you asked her to give me your phone number so I could give you an update on the kittens—they're doing good! I’m still thinking of names, but I think I’ll just leave it up to whoever ends up taking them in. Hope everything is good with you!” 

As soon as the message sent, he shut the phone and stuffed it in his pocket, heart pounding. He couldn’t stand to look at it again. Oh, god. He’d really done that. He couldn’t take it back. It was done. 

He tried to read his book, but it was torture. He’d done it. Ruined his one chance at talking to someone outside the house, a new person, someone who knew nothing about him. 

(Nothing except that she’d seen him on one of the worst nights of his life—but he was trying not to think about that.) 

The minutes dragged by. It was fine. She wasn’t going to reply. Vanya had already given her the kitten update anyway—what more was there to talk about? It was good that she wasn’t going to reply. He had nothing to say. He’d only reveal what a boring and inconsequential person he was, if he said any more. Best to leave it there. 

Eight minutes after his first text, his phone buzzed. The sudden vibration was unexpected. He startled, the thing rippling beneath his skin, sharing his surprise. 

“Hi Ben! Oh my god what an amazing picture so cute! If they were mine, I’d be selfish and name them all myself haha but you can totally let other people name them...you should still name one though, what about the one you said you guys might keep? Everything's good here just having dinner and watching jeopardy with my parents...how about u?” 

He stared at the message as though it were some code he had to break. He realized he was grinning and tried to stop. She was just being polite. She didn’t really want to talk to him. Why would she? He was a stranger. He was just the brother of her new friends. He shouldn’t read too much into her friendliness. That was just her personality. Vanya had even said so. 

“That sounds like fun! We used to watch that sometimes, but...it got a little too competitive. You should ask Diego about that sometime, he used to take his Jeopardy very seriously. I’m just reading. If we do keep one of the kittens, my sister will probably name it. It was Allison’s idea to take one with us, so I guess it would kind of be her cat then.” 

“Oh my god I'll totally ask him about that. Is he a sore loser? I bet he is. You only have two sisters right? And a bunch of brothers?” 

“I wouldn’t call him a sore loser, just competitive. Yup, two sisters and four brothers, what about you?” 

“One older brother. He's my stepbrother actually but u know. He's at college right now. Wow, six siblings...that sounds both really fun and really annoying haha” 

“I don’t know, I can’t really imagine what it would be like without all of them. Do you miss your brother since he’s at college?” Then he added, “Sorry, you don’t have to answer if that’s too personal!” 

“No worries! Yeah I do miss him but not too much honestly, he still comes home and visits pretty often and we talk on the phone and all that. Plus I think moving out was good for him, he’s way more chill and less annoying now lol” 

“What are you doing?” Klaus said, flopping onto the couch beside Ben. 

“Nothing.” 

“Are you _texting?_ ” Klaus said, grinning. “Wow. A shocking new development. Who do you even have to text?” 

“It’s nothing, don’t make it a big deal...” 

“But _who_?” Klaus’ grin widened. “Oh my god, is it that girl? The only groupie of the shittiest secret band to ever never have played a single set?” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Diego said, throwing a pillow at Klaus which smacked him right in the face. 

“You’re texting Jamie?” Vanya said. 

“Ben’s texting someone?” Allison said, sounding all too intrigued. 

“Oh my god,” he mumbled. 

“What are you talking about?” Klaus said. 

“Nothing! Just--the cats!” 

“Sure,” Klaus said, raising his brows. 

“Do I know this person?” Allison asked. 

“No, I don’t think you’ve met her,” Diego said. “We haven’t known her that long, she just likes a lot of the same music, we met her at a show.” 

“How does Ben know her and I don’t?” 

“You don’t have a monopoly on knowing other people, you know,” Vanya said. 

Allison flipped her curls over her shoulder, brushing that comment off effortlessly, only a slight sheepish grin hinting at her embarrassment. “I know that. But, come on, this is news, you guys should have told me. Good for you, Ben.” 

She probably didn’t mean for that to sound so patronizing. Still. Sometimes the intent didn’t have anything to do with the impact. 

“You talk to people all the time, it’s not a big deal,” he said, even though—yeah, it was kind of a big deal, actually. 

“Yeah, but you don’t! This is good. I’m glad for you,” she said, sounding pleased. 

Right. If he was showing interest in talking to other people, of course she’d take that as a good sign as far as him moving out of the house was concerned. 

Was that what this meant? But texting one person for the first time was a lot different than moving out, and having to talk to new people all of the time. And not just with a phone—in person. It wasn’t at all equivalent. 

Still. He liked that she was happy with him. 

How did one end a text conversation? 

He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t need to know. He didn’t want to. Over the next few days, the conversation just continued, like a tapestry unrolling before him. There were pauses and intermissions, but they picked up where they left off or jumped to an entirely new topic like it was perfectly natural and they’d known each other for much longer than a few weeks. 

It was perfect. It was so much _easier_ to talk this way. He could think about his replies, he could edit them. He could read back and remind himself what she’d said before. Granted, the nuances of tone and expression weren’t as easily picked up over text, but... 

But that was well worth the sacrifice. She couldn’t see him. He didn’t have to worry the entire time that at any moment now, he was going to give himself away and frighten or disgust her and make her never want to talk to him again. He could actually pay attention to the conversation, instead of worrying about and policing his body. It was a conversation between two disembodied voices. It was exhilarating. For the first time in his life, someone was getting to know him without knowing Them at all. She knew him better than she would have, had she known what he was—her idea of him was untroubled and undistorted by the presence of the Horror. Finally, finally, finally, someone knew him for what he was, and not for what They were. 

That’s how it felt, at first. Not like hiding something vital and essential, but like being free and honest and more himself than he had been before. 

Later, he would try to find the moment when that had all changed. When it had started to feel instead like playing the role of somebody else entirely, when the act of hiding began to feel like a lie or a betrayal, of himself and of her. It must have happened, he would decide, in whatever moment her friendship had become something precious to him. Paradoxically, in the moment when he began to truly care what she thought of him, when he most desired her acceptance—that must have been the moment he had begun burning with the need to tell her the very thing he had thought most likely to drive her away. 

Something terrible was happening to him. Whenever he thought of her, he felt ill. 

He couldn’t stop thinking about her. 

“You’re always smiling at that phone now,” Allison said. They were going over their applications, which were due soon. They had everything they needed in order. It was really happening. 

His face heated up and he stuffed the phone back into his pocket. “Sorry.” 

“No, don’t be—it's sweet. I’m glad you’ve got someone to talk to outside of the house. It’s good for you—at least, I think so. It’s been good for me.” 

He nodded, feeling a little guilty about the admission. That didn’t seem right—it shouldn’t be a betrayal, that he enjoyed talking to someone outside his family. The feeling lingered anyway. “Yeah. She sees things so differently. I mean, I knew the way we grew up was...unconventional? But I’d always just think, well, that makes sense, it was never going to be totally, you know, normal. And that’s okay, lots of people don’t have a totally regular childhood. But talking to someone else makes me see just _how_ different things are. Like stuff I took for granted my whole life, that I thought was just how things are, isn’t actually the way I thought it was. It didn’t _have_ to be that way. I don’t know. Does that make sense?” 

“I know what you mean. Don’t get me wrong...Luther might think that because I’m leaving, I’m rejecting everything about our lives here, but that’s not true. There’s a lot that I...that I wouldn’t change, despite it all. But...yeah, I hear what you’re saying. I think it’s important to grow up and see, _oh,_ like—there are other ways, people live in all kinds of ways, it didn’t have to be...exactly like that.” 

“Yeah.” 

They were quiet for a while, going over their application materials. Then she spoke, a smile curling the edges of her mouth. “So, is that all you like about her?” 

“What—what do you mean?” 

“Oh, come on, don’t play dumb.” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

“I’m talking about how _someone_ has got what might be the most obvious crush in the whole world.” 

“What? Allison, that’s, that's not—no. I don’t know what you’re—me? Her? I have no idea why you'd even—that’s, that’s gross.” 

She laughed. “Gross? What are you, twelve? Aw, just look at you—don't be so embarrassed, I think it’s sweet! Can’t we talk about this?” 

“There’s nothing to talk about.” 

“Are you serious?” 

“We’re just friends.” 

“Well, I know that. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a little crush. It doesn’t have to be such a big deal, you know.” 

Ben stared down at his desk, fingers twisting the fabric of his jacket in his lap. “That would be...kind of weird though, wouldn’t it? Isn’t that bad? If you don’t know how the other person feels, I mean, then that seems wrong, doesn’t it?” 

Allison frowned, propping her elbow on the desk and leaning her cheek against her fist. “What? No way. How would that be bad? They’re just feelings, Ben, it can happen to anyone. I think it’s just normal. It’s not like you're being a creep about it or anything.” 

“Oh. Well...I don’t know. I don’t know if I feel that way. It’s not like there’s ever been anybody else around to feel like that about.” 

“Right. Uh-huh.” 

“So how would I know?” 

“Well...how does she make you feel?” 

He shrugged, his face burning. “I don’t know. Happy?” 

“And? Like, I don’t know—does she give you butterflies? Don’t laugh, I know it's a cliché, but it’s a cliché for a reason.” 

“I don’t know. I don’t know what that’s supposed to feel like.” 

“Like a, you know, fluttery feeling? It’s hard to explain,” she said, playing with the charm on the end of her pen and avoiding meeting his eyes, which was fine by him. “Does she make you feel like that?” 

“She makes me feel sort of sick sometimes. Is that what you mean?” 

“Um...maybe?” 

“Oh, no...this is horrible.” 

“What? Why?” 

He put his face in his hands. “She’s the only person I’ve ever gotten to know besides you guys, and now I’m ruining it, even faster than I thought I would.” 

“What? Oh, come on, don’t you think that’s a little dramatic? How are you ruining it?” 

“With my...you know. Feelings.” 

Allison laughed. “You haven’t ruined anything! Look, I’m sorry, if I knew this was going to give you some kind of crisis, I wouldn’t have brought it up. I was just teasing you. Maybe it’s a crush, or maybe it’s just that you guys get along well and it’s always a good feeling, to make a new friend. Either way, it’s nothing to be upset about.” 

“But...don’t I need to know which it is? Don’t I need to do something about it?” 

“Um...no? You don’t need to do anything. Just, whatever you’ve been doing.” 

“Oh. Okay then.” He was quiet for a while, thinking. “I think...she’s kind of important to me. I mean, not the way you guys are. But as a friend. I think...I think I’m just nervous, because I’ve never really had one before, and I don’t want to mess it up. It’s nice to talk to someone who doesn’t really know anything about the Academy. Somebody who’s never been, you know—who doesn’t know me well enough to have ever been scared or grossed out or whatever. I’ve never talked to anyone like that before.” 

Allison frowned. "I understand how it's nice, getting to know people on your own terms. But, hey...you don't really mean the rest of that, do you? You know that’s not true.” 

He forced himself to swallow the lump in his throat and smile at her. “I know.” 

She looked at him for a second during which he looked down, around the room, back at her. He forced himself to hold her gaze, to show that he was fine, and this wasn’t making something soft and barely held together in his heart quiver. "I mean, really, Ben. Come on, I know we've always teased each other, but you don't have to take everything so much to heart."

"I know. You're right. It was a dumb thing to say. I don't really think...I don't know why I said it."

Her voice was low and surprisingly sad when she spoke. She sounded much older. “We weren’t very nice to each other, growing up, were we.” 

He smiled. “We were just kids. Kids aren’t always nice.” 

“Yeah. I guess so. But I just...there are some things I really wish I could go back and do differently, you know? Sometimes I remember something one of us said, and I just cringe. Especially to Vanya, and, well, to you. How could we not have known how mean we were being? We must have known, right? Or did we just not care? And that’s...that’s terrible, to think. Because you do take things to heart. Maybe we all do, in our own ways, and we just don't like to admit it.” 

Ben squirmed, fidgeting with his pen, twisting the cap off and on. “What are you talking about? No, you were—you were all great. And if there’s something you want to say to Vanya—it’s not too late, you know, I’m sure she’d—you guys could talk about it. I mean, it’s true, I think, that...that if there’s one of us we owe an apology, it’s probably her. Of course, we’ve all said things we wish we could take back, but I can’t think of anything that was so terrible, Allison, nothing for you to feel so bad about, at least not to me.” She laughed softly and he rushed to go on. “I mean that, don’t laugh. I really mean it.” 

“You don’t have to do that, you know.” 

“Do what?” 

“Try and make me feel better, about things that I did wrong. Ways I guess I might have hurt you.” 

“You didn’t, though. Really, it’s okay, you don’t need to—” 

“It’s not though. I have to say this. How can I not, when you just said you think I’m scared, or, or disgusted by you or something? How do you think I can just let that go, how could that ever be okay?” 

“I...I didn’t mean it like that, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry.” 

“You don’t need to apologize—please don’t say sorry for that, not to me. Sometimes I think about—about things we said to each other, stupid things we did that I thought were funny or okay at the time, like—if I could get away with it, that meant it was fine. I did it to everyone, god, I could really be a brat...but you let me get away with a lot. That makes it sound like I’m saying it’s your fault, but it’s not, it's just my own stupid justification. Like, if you were really upset, then you’d fight back, wouldn't you? That’s the kind of anger I understand. I tried to push you so you’d hurt me back, so we’d be even. But you weren’t like that.” 

“Allison...it’s okay. I think you’re making it sound worse than it was. We were kids, none of us have ever been perfect. There are things I’d do differently, if I could...not just when we were kids, I mean, I do things I wish I could do differently sort of all the time? I’m sure I’ve done things that hurt you, too.” 

She laughed. Neither of them could quite meet the other’s gaze. “But I’m the one trying to apologize here—I've got a point to make, I’m just trying to get to it. I could be having this conversation with any one of you guys, it’s true, but...but I feel like maybe I’m only ready to have it with you, and I don’t know—maybe you’ll listen, maybe you’re the one who needs to hear it the most right now.”

She twisted the cap on her pen, clicking it on and off. “I remember so many things. So many times I could have done better. Like that time in the field, when we all just—just stared at you, and like, that time when me and Diego said you should be on that show, that horrible show we all knew you hated, and we made fun of you, and I got so _angry,_ because you were so upset over _nothing_ and that made me feel like a horrible person. But the problem couldn’t be with me—it had to be you, you were just too sensitive.” 

Allison scoffed under her breath, shaking her head. “I said that to you all the time. Maybe you don’t even remember, but I just—I still think about it. Like, the look on your face, when I came in and you were holding Number Eight in my room, and, and—that time you asked me to rumor you, about the rabbits, and—and we all knew what he made you do, but I never asked how you felt about it, never tried to find out if I could help you. Why didn't we ever try to help each other? I guess I was just scared. Or...complacent. Everything seemed fine enough, why should I stick my neck out and rock the boat, right?” 

“Allison,” he said. _Stop. That’s enough._ His voice came out small and quiet and he couldn’t make it work again. 

She spoke faster. “I tried to pretend nothing was wrong. Maybe I...maybe I didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to understand. Because...because my training was never like that. I didn’t have...things have been different, for all of us. That’s not to say I haven’t...I mean, I’ve had my own...you know. It was just different. And I...I didn’t have the same difficulty some of you have. I mean...you and Klaus, I guess. It was always...I won’t say easy. But I was always good at it. And when it’s over, I can leave it behind. I really can. But it makes it harder for me to believe that everything’s fine, that _I’m_ fine, when I have to see what it’s done to...the rest of you. So sometimes I just...try not to see it.” 

She paused and wiped her eyes. Outside in the hall someone pounded up the stairs, and then a door slammed. There was a thread coming loose on the sleeve of his jumper. He pulled at it and then stopped, alarmed at how easily it unraveled. He tried smoothing it down, but the loose end still stuck out, ready to catch on something. 

She was quiet when she continued. “Maybe we shouldn’t bring these things back up, but it kills me, remembering, and seeing how you just—learned to try and hide things, like you were—I don’t know, ashamed. I can’t stand thinking that we made you that way, just because we were stupid, mean little kids who didn’t think twice before speaking, just because of this place, this _house_. Maybe you’ve forgotten. But I haven’t. And I needed you to know that, I guess.” 

He stared at her, speechless for a moment. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, kept her gaze downcast. She was blinking a lot. “Of course I remember. How could I not remember all that? But I had no idea that anybody else did. I didn’t know you...I didn’t know.” 

Her face crumpled as she struggled to hold her composure. She gave a shaky laugh. “Of course you remember. I think I only did recently. It’s all this planning to move out, you know. Whenever I think about the future, I end up thinking about the past. Do you—do you think about that stuff a lot?” 

“No. Not...not all the time. We had a lot of good times too, you know? That’s what I’d rather think about. Why focus on the rest?” 

Allison took a breath and angled her body to face him, hands spreading open on the desk between them where she kept her gaze fixed. “Here’s the thing, Ben—I know that you love me. I know you love all of us. But I also know that there might be things that you can’t forget. I know there are things that might make you angry, that still hurt, and you might have a hard time forgiving all of them, and that’s okay. I understand that and it’s okay and you can feel both things at once. I know I do. All the time. And I want you to know that—that whatever you do. Even if...even if you choose to stay here. I’m still going to be on your side, okay? I’m always going to be on your side, rooting for you, wanting the best things for you. But if you stay—don’t let it be because you’re scared, or ashamed. You’re a good person, Ben, and you need to...you need to be yourself now, and live for that person, okay? Whatever that means for you. You have to. I know how that sounds, like a bad cliché, but it’s the truth, for all of us. Don’t let what’s happened here, all that stuff you can’t forget—don't let that hold you back. You can’t. You have to be better and stronger now than we were then. It’s important. Okay?” 

She sniffed and rubbed her thumb in the corner of both her eyes. When he blinked, his vision wavered for a second beneath a film of water. “You too,” he said. “You too, Allison.” He cleared his throat, glanced at the door. “Well. That was...a lot."

She laughed. “Yeah. I don’t know if any of that made any sense at all. I’m sorry, maybe I’ve just totally embarrassed myself and none of that meant anything to you. So maybe we can just not mention this ever again and pretend it didn't happen?”

“No. No, I just—I think you’re...I think you’re ahead of me. I just don’t know what to say yet.” 

“It’s okay. I just threw a lot at you, I’d be overwhelmed, too.” 

“But thank you. Thank you, Allie.” 

He wanted the perfect words now—but they weren’t there. He just thanked her, and she hugged him, and he hoped that this was enough to hold them together, amidst the depth of all they had said and the things they didn’t have the words yet to say. 

“So, this friend of yours,” Klaus said. “She’s not a fan, is she?” 

“What?” 

“I mean, just hear me out on this. She made friends with Vanya and Diego by chance, but then she figures out whose kids they are, and now she’s texting you all the time, so...do you see where I’m going with this?” 

Ben frowned at him over the top of his book. Klaus was seated on the floor, legs crossed, body slumped in an approximation of a casual slouch, but there was nervous tension in his shoulders as he picked at the black polish on his nails. 

“No, I don’t.” 

“You’re sure she’s not...oh, how to put this delicately...trying to collect them all?” 

Ben stared, giving his brother a chance to take back what he’d said, or to clarify his meaning to be something less hurtful. When he didn’t, Ben said, “You think she’s only talking to me because...she knows about our family?” 

“Well, look, not to toot my own horn or anything, but we are kind of famous, and maybe she’s into that. I’m not saying that’s a fact, I’m just—” 

“Well, good, because it’s not. That’s stupid. Why would anyone want to befriend us because of that? If anything, knowing who we are should make regular people stay away.” 

Klaus shrugged, expression impassive, as if they were discussing nothing more significant than the weather. “Some people see it differently. Look, I’m just saying, you’re sure you’re not like—a curiosity, to her?” 

Ben opened and shut his mouth, grasping for words for a moment. “That’s what you think? That’s the only reason you can imagine anybody would want to talk to us?” 

“I’m just asking, it’s a possibility! Everybody has an angle, right?” 

“Well, Jamie never even asks about the Academy or powers, or any of that stuff. She doesn’t even know what I—who I am, like, in that context, at all, so—so that doesn’t even make any sense.” 

“Okay,” Klaus said, holding up his palms. “I was just putting it out there. But you say that’s not how it is, so then, great, that’s not how it is, end of story. What do I know?” 

Klaus let the subject drop, and Ben did his best to bury his doubts. 

To rebury them, that is. It wasn’t fair to resent Klaus for having voiced what were, after all, his own worries. But plenty of things weren’t fair. Why should this be? 

Those were the kinds of thoughts he had, when he was feeling uncharitable. He saved them for when he was alone, and then he berated himself for being such a terrible person with such callous thoughts, and then he stamped those thoughts down so that he could almost pretend he’d never had them at all, that he was still the person they called the nice one. 

He’d never particularly felt that he deserved the designation, but it made for excellent camouflage. 

Jamie invited them over to her house on a Saturday. They took the bus to meet her. He sat between Diego and Vanya. The Horror was curled up small beneath his skin, squirming and tense and coiled tight like a spring ready to snap open, but it was keeping itself tucked out of sight, huddled down inside their body where it was safe. It understood safe—understood that for however small and fragile he was on his own, he was also their armor. Able to move through this alien world, all their soft and vulnerable parts hidden away, safe inside of him while none of these strangers suspected a thing. 

He was able to forget, most of the time, how it felt being around other people—people who weren’t his siblings, weren’t criminals or hostages who saw him for what he was. He was able to forget how it felt to be keenly aware of himself as a person-shaped vessel for something awful. Not one of these people knew what he was. What would they do, if they did? 

He never felt more alien than when he was surrounded by regular people, and with a sick shudder that was part relief, part revulsion, part thrill, realized what a convincing human he made on the surface. 

Before they’d left the house, there had been a certain amount of tension between the three of them—he got the feeling that they hadn’t expected him to actually accept the invitation, and were a bit miffed that he was edging in on their outside-the-house life. By the time they were on the bus, most of that tension had faded, replaced with what he might tentatively call a wary concern. 

“Relax, man,” Diego said. “You’re making me nervous.” 

“I am relaxed.” 

“You’re shivering,” Vanya said. 

“It’s cold.” 

“You’ve got on like, thirty layers.” 

“I just don’t want to mess anything up.” 

They were quiet for a moment. Then Diego bumped their shoulders together, and just like that, the cagey tension had turned protective. “You won’t,” he said, as if he could be so sure. 

And, as it turned out, maybe he could be. The sun was shining in the park when they got off the bus. The people there went on jogging and walking their dogs and talking to one another. The world kept turning without taking any apparent notice of the three of them as they walked across the grass towards Jamie, where she was standing under a tree looking down at her phone. Diego called out to her and she looked up and smiled at them, waved. 

They walked outside in the sunlight and nothing caught fire. No one stopped to stare. The sky continued not to fall. 

He almost couldn’t remember what in the world he’d been so afraid of. 

In the apartment where Jamie lived with her family, her stepfather was puttering around in the kitchen while a jazz record played. He smiled and greeted them when they came in the door. 

“So you three must be Diego, Ben, and Vanya. I know I’ve heard Jamie mention your names a lot lately, but I don’t know who’s who,” he said, grinning and studying the three of them, as if he might somehow be able to divine their identities by sight alone. 

Diego made their introductions, sticking out his hand and saying, “It’s nice to meet you too, sir.” 

Jamie’s father shook his hand, looking both surprised and amused. “What polite friends you’ve got, maybe they’ll be a good influence on you.” 

Jamie rolled her eyes and dragged them away, but she was smiling, so Ben didn’t think she was really upset at her father at all—but then, he found it difficult to parse household dynamics outside of the ones he was familiar with, so he couldn’t be sure. There was much here that he didn’t understand. He hoped it was not too late to learn. 

Later, she showed him the spider. “This is Mab,” she said, her voice quiet as they bent down together to peer into the tank. “She’s pretty, don’t you think?” 

He suppressed a queasy shudder as he watched the spider’s hairy legs moving slowly in their synchronized rhythm. Perhaps its back would feel like velvet if he were to touch it—but the thought of touching it repulsed him. He glanced at Jamie and saw in her eyes all of the love and admiration and curiosity he did not feel, but wanted to. But because she did, it existed out there in the world, and maybe he could find it for himself one day, if he kept looking, so he turned his gaze back to the spider and made himself look closer. 

“Yes,” he said. “I guess she is.” 

It was the truth—one day, he hoped to believe in it. 

Diego ducked into the library while Ben was curled on the sofa staring intently at his phone. “You seen Klaus?” 

Ben shook his head without looking up. “He hasn’t been in here.” 

“Okay, thanks,” Diego said, turning to go. Instead, he paused and stepped closer. “Who are you talking to?” 

“Jamie.” 

Diego nodded. He looked down at his shoes, stuffed his hands in his pockets, shifted his weight from foot to foot. Ben watched his brother from the corner of his eye, becoming increasingly disturbed. He sat up on the sofa and looked at Diego. “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing. No, it’s nothing.” 

“Are you sure?” 

Diego nodded. He wouldn’t quite meet Ben’s eye when he said, “Just...you and her talk a lot now, huh.” 

“I...guess?” 

“That’s cool.” 

They stared at each other for a second, before Ben looked back down at his phone. “Okay. Feel free to let me know why you’re being weird whenever you’re ready.” 

“I just...she doesn’t know who you are, does she?” 

Ben looked back up at him, brow creasing. “What?” 

“I mean, like...you haven’t talked to her about the Academy, or any of that, right? You haven’t told her, like...which one of us you are?” 

“No. You and Vanya said you guys don’t talk about that stuff with her, so why would I?” 

“I don’t know. Never mind, forget it,” Diego said, looking uncomfortable. 

“No, tell me...what is it?” 

“So, you don’t think she knows you’re the Horror?” 

Ben stared at him, clutching the phone in his hands. “What did you tell her?” 

“Hang on, wait a minute,” Diego said, holding up his hands. “I didn’t tell her anything, I was just making sure _you_ didn’t tell her. It’s just—don’t get mad, I’m just trying to look out for you, all right? It’s just that... Look, Jamie is kind of into weird freaky stuff, you know? Which, like, that’s cool and all, whatever, but I could just imagine her being curious about, you know, you, and...am I making sense?” 

“Wh...what?” 

“Forget it. Forget I said anything.” 

“She doesn’t even know about Them. That’s not—that can’t be why she wants to be my friend.” 

“I know, I wasn’t saying that, of course it’s not. I never meant it like that, I just meant...I don't know.” 

“You meant that I’m ‘weird, freaky stuff.’” 

Diego scowled and crossed his arms. “Don’t take that out of context, you know that’s not what I meant.” 

“Isn’t it, though?” 

“Do you really have to give me a hard time about this? I was just checking, just trying to look out for you. Of course that’s not why she’s your friend, she’s not an asshole, but if she knew, I just know she’d be curious and want to ask you about it, and I know you’d hate that and probably be really uncomfortable and it would just be this whole thing for no reason, just like you’re making this right now. Forget it, it was just a stupid thought.” 

Sure. Done. He’d just forget about it. He definitely wasn’t going to lose any sleep, wondering if this how it was always going to be—either lie and hide, or become an object of disgust or curiosity. Was one better than the other? They’d gone so closely hand in hand so far when it came to Them that at times, they seemed inseparable. 

But then, maybe everyone felt that way, to some extent. Carefully folding away the parts of themselves they didn’t want held to the light. 

One day, Jamie invited them to come visit her at the place where she did her “community service hours.” They left the house and walked down the block so that no one would see when she picked them up in her mother’s old white sedan, Diego swinging into the passenger seat, Ben and Vanya automatically sliding into the back. 

(Earlier, Ben had wondered aloud about what this community service was, and if they should be doing some of it, too. Diego had given him an odd look and said, “I’m pretty sure we do plenty of that already, Ben.”) 

She drove them to the edge of the city, where the streets were heavily shaded by trees, and through the gates of the wildlife refuge. The whole ride there, Ben was quiet, listening to the three of them talk as he pressed himself against the door, while the Horror pressed itself against his skin. He wasn’t sure if the pressure was threatening or comforting. Was it possible for anything to be both? 

She parked the car and they all got out, following along as she led them down a hard-packed dirt path that wound its way beneath the pines, past a long row of wood and mesh cages. She turned to walk backwards, grinning. His heart squeezed. The smell of the animals was overwhelming. So many small, fluttering things, so close at hand. He felt queasy. 

“Here’s where we’ll start the grand tour,” she said, sweeping an arm out to gesture to the cages. “The same place they start all newbie volunteers—with the birds.” 

“Why is that?” asked Vanya, leaning down to peer into one of the cages. 

“Because they’re mean as hell, and by far the dirtiest,” she said, her grin widening. “Especially the turkey. Ever been attacked by a turkey? It’s not fun. The vulture’s mean, too, and I once had one of the owls dive at me. And since they never finish all their food, when you’re cleaning the bird cages, you’re pretty much going around cleaning up shit and picking up dead chicks and rats that have been sitting out in the sun all day. Good times all around, good times.” 

“That’s disgusting,” Diego said, wrinkling his nose and studying the cages at a distance, hands stuffed in his pockets. “You volunteer to do this? They aren’t even paying you?” 

“Nope. Not a cent.” 

“And you do this _why?_ ” 

“Well, it does give me hours, which I need for school. Plus, I don’t know. It’s gross, but I enjoy it. It feels like good work, you know? Somebody’s got to do it, and I feel like this place is really doing something important. The animals can’t say thank you, but I know I’m making their lives better by giving them clean places to live and taking care of them.” 

“But why are they all here in the first place?” Ben asked. 

“They all have their own reasons. Most of them were either injured or found abandoned when they were young, too young to survive on their own. We release the ones we can, but some of them do live here permanently.” 

“I just can’t believe you can spend your time however you want, and this is what you do with it,” Diego grumbled. 

“I think it’s really cool,” Vanya said, straightening up from where she’d been crouched by one of the cages, peeking in at a burrowing owl. When Ben glanced at her, she had her gaze cast downwards, a shy smile on her face, her cheeks tinged pink. 

Jamie grinned. “I don’t know about that. I mean, it’s sure not being in a punk band. When am I going to get to see you guys play for real?” 

“We’re working on it, okay? Any day now,” said Diego. 

“Okay, well. You better let me know, I’ll be there,” she said, and when she caught Ben’s eye it felt like she was grinning just for him, as though the two of them shared some joke or secret. His stomach flopped. What was wrong with him? What was this helpless feeling of delicious dread, this giddy nausea? It must be the Horror, getting a little too energetic with its restless fidgeting, rearranging his insides to make itself more comfortable. 

She led them past the small mammal enclosures where they saw raccoons, possums, and foxes. They looked at the little tortoises toddling around in the grass, munching at plates full of salad. Next came the pair of black bears in the largest enclosure, lounging in the sun. 

“I saved my favorite for last,” Jamie said, leading them into the shade of an overhang, where they stopped in front of a wall of glass windows. “The reptile house.” 

Diego peered into the glass, then back at Jamie, incredulous. “They’re empty.” 

“No, look closer.” 

She stepped closer and they all crowded around, their eyes roaming the enclosure. 

“Oh,” Ben whispered. “I see it.” He pointed at the glass. “Right there, wrapped around that branch.” 

“There she is,” Jamie said, smiling at the tan and brown snake as if she were greeting a dear friend. “Good eye.” 

Something was fluttering in his stomach. He wrapped an arm around himself, going very still and holding his breath for a moment, listening to the stirrings of the Horror. But They felt calm and docile. Maybe whatever was wrong with him had nothing to do with Them at all. The thought hadn’t even occurred to him before. For so long, he’d been able to blame every little ache or odd feeling on his alien tenant—he had not considered that he might be the cause. 

They looked at the rest of the snakes and lizards, before Jamie said, “Come on, I want to show you something.” She led them around to the back of the building, where she opened a door into a narrow room where they could see the hatches on the backs of the cages lining one wall. “Technically, you guys aren’t really supposed to be in here,” she said. “But I won’t tell if you don’t.” 

“Will you get in trouble if anyone sees us?” Vanya said, glancing anxiously behind them at the shut door, as if it might spring open any moment. 

Jamie waved a hand. “Ah, no, my supervisor’s chill. As long as you guys don’t go sticking your hands where they don’t belong and getting bit by something venomous.” 

“These snakes are venomous?” Diego said, alarmed. 

“Some of them, yeah.” 

“And they let _you_ take care of them?” 

“No, no, not on my own. My super handles the snakes—she scoops them up with this,” Jamie said, picking up a long pole with a curved loop at the end of it. “And then drops them in there while we clean their enclosures.” She pointed at a covered bin and set the pole back down. “I had to spend a lot of time with the birds before I got to work in here. But this is my favorite place.” 

“Why?” Ben asked. 

“I don’t know. I just like them, I guess. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like all the animals—even the birds. But these guys are special. They’re also so quiet, and clean, which is a plus. But that isn’t why I like them. I just feel calm in here, being near them, handling them. Here, I’ll show you my babies.” 

She kicked a stool over to a wall of cubbies and stepped up, carefully bringing a bin down from one of the shelves and setting it on the table behind them. She slid the lid partially off the bin, so that they could all peer down at the small, mottled brown snakes twisting about and coiling in the pale litter of their bedding, each of them no larger around than a finger. 

“These little guys just got here,” she said, smiling down at them. “They’re baby pine snakes. Aren’t they the cutest?” 

“I don’t know if cute’s the word for them,” Diego said. “But they sure are small.” 

“I didn’t really expect for this to be the case, or for me to be able to tell, but they all have different personalities,” Jamie said. 

“Really?” Vanya asked. 

Jamie nodded. “At least, they seem to, to me.” Then she reached her hands down into the bin. 

“What are you doing?” Diego said, moving as if to stop her. 

“It’s okay—these ones aren’t venomous. I do this all the time.” 

“They can’t hurt you?” 

“No,” she said. “I mean...they can bite. They’ve never bitten me, but I suppose they could. No venom, though. And look how small their mouths are—it wouldn’t be easy for them.” 

She cupped her hand and let one of the snakes slither close to her, its tiny thread-like tongue flickering out to taste the air, brushing against her fingertip. Gently, she lifted it from the bin and watched it coil around her fingers, lacing itself through them. 

“Would any of you like to hold one?” she asked. 

“Not really. Isn’t it slimy?” Diego said. 

“No, not at all.” She held her hands out to them. Vanya shook her head. “That’s okay. You don’t have to.” 

“Can I?” Ben said, voice low and quiet, as though he were afraid to be caught doing something he shouldn’t. 

“Of course,” she said. “Just come a little closer and hold your hands over the bin, just in case—perfect.” 

She eased the snake from her own hands into his cupped palms. Her fingers brushed his and he tensed, as if the contact might spark some hideous calamity. Nothing happened. The snake slid against his skin and he parted his fingers to allow it to thread itself around them. Its body was cool and dry and smooth. It was not quite like anything he had felt before. His skin tingled where it touched him, the thing that lived inside him curious about this contact but not quite bold or eager enough to go against him and breach the safe seal of his skin, expose itself to this new and strange place, this new and strange creature. 

“She likes you,” Jamie said, smiling. 

“Really?” 

“Oh, I have no idea. But she’s not hissing. She seems relaxed, doesn’t she?” 

“I can’t tell. I don’t speak snake.” 

Jamie laughed. In his periphery, he caught Diego rolling his eyes. Vanya pointed at something in the bin, her face wrinkled with unease. “What’s that?” 

They all looked at the small, pale, gray-pink...thing lying in the bedding in the corner of the bin. At first, Ben thought it was stationary—but then he saw that it was alive, making useless curling motions, slow and faint. His stomach sank at the sight, with pity and dread. 

“Oh. That’s breakfast,” said Jamie. “Sometimes they aren’t hungry enough to finish eating.” 

“But what _is_ it?” 

“A baby mouse.” 

“Oh. But...it’s still alive,” Vanya said, staring at the squirming creature with obvious discomfort. 

“Yeah... These guys are getting released one day. It’s important for them to have live food. I mean, it’s important for pet snakes, too.” 

“What happens to them when they don’t get eaten?” 

“Well...they die. They’re newborns, they aren’t really...yeah.” 

“Oh. That’s...kind of sad, isn’t it?” 

“It is, yeah. I don’t really like to think about them too much, to tell you the truth. But I mean...that doesn’t make me blame the snakes or anything, you know? They need what they need.” 

“You don’t think it’s wrong?” Ben said, staring at the pink thing he could scarcely call a mouse, so new and fresh and soft it seemed not yet ready to exist, not fully made up. “That thing is helpless.” 

“I don’t know. I didn’t make life the way it is. Things have to eat other things. If I’d made life up, maybe I’d have it differently, but nobody asked me. I don’t know if some things are right or wrong, or if they’re just natural.” 

They were all quiet for a moment. Ben lowered his hands into the bin and the snake unwound itself from his fingers and slithered away. 

“Sorry,” Jamie said, sliding the lid back in place. “I get defensive about stuff sometimes. I didn’t mean to sound, I don’t know, mad or something.” 

“It’s okay, I understand,” said Vanya. “I think you have a point. Still, it’s sad. I wouldn’t want to watch it happen. Them eating.” 

“That’s fair,” said Jamie. “To me, that’s one more thing that’s remarkable about them, the way they eat. But of course, that doesn’t mean anyone else has to like it, or watch.” 

“But why?” Ben asked. 

“Why what?” 

“Why do you like these things so much?” 

“I don’t know. Why shouldn’t I like them?” 

“Is it because most people don’t? Because it makes you different?” 

Her eyes widened just slightly. She smiled, gave a quick laugh. “What? No.” 

“Then why?” 

Her smile faded. He tried to read her expression—that first trace of surprise, that flicker of possible hurt. He wished he could take the words back. No, he didn’t. He only thought he should wish so—what he wanted was her answer. 

“I don’t know. Why not?” 

“Lots of people don’t.” 

“So? Maybe you’re right, maybe that does only make me like them more. Because they’re, I don’t know...because I know they’re amazing but somehow they’re so misunderstood.” She shrugged, looked down. “I guess that sounds pretty dumb.” 

“I don’t think so,” Vanya said. “I think it’s...I don’t know. I think it’s nice.” 

Jamie picked up the box and turned her back to them, stepping onto the stool and sliding the box back into its cubby in the wall. He could hear the slow hearts of the reptiles beating through the walls of their cages, feel the static prickle of their whispering bodies as the snakes coiled in on themselves. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise this is not turning into a Ben/OC story, I swear! (Okay, I’m laughing to myself right now, but like...if you hated this chapter, you can totally tell me, I can take the heat.) Also, they have cellphones because...I say so. My city now. I hope that doesn’t terribly annoy anyone, but it’s not the first inaccuracy, and anyway, I figure...this story is about character development and relationships, not achieving a totally canon-typical portrait of tua settings/technological status. Also, I’m basing a lot of this college stuff on what I remember about applying in the U.S., since that’s what I’m familiar with, so I’m sorry if some of it doesn’t make sense...honestly some of it doesn’t even make sense to me because I’m tentatively imagining their location as somewhere in the northeast U.S. (or...Canada?) because that’s just where my brain places stuff that takes place in vague snowy-weather cities, and because Mr. Way is from New Jersey so I just...kind of put it somewhere in the alternate universe version of that region. And from what I can discern, the college frenzy is...a bit different up there than it is in my neck of the woods. Not sure though. Anyway, it’s not important. 
> 
> Fun fact about this chapter: editing it was a wild ride because it totally took me back to the state of mind I was in when I wrote it several months ago during the summer. I’d just moved to a new place that turned out to be crawling with spiders. Spiders of all kinds, including brown recluse, which I’d see at least one of a day. Had to laugh while reading this again, remembering myself back then—twitching, missing several nights of sleep a week, shaking all my clothes and shoes out, checking for spider bites, obsessively reading about spiders online and looking at pictures of them until I was actually unable to fall asleep. Great times! I am pleased to say there is a happy ending to this tale, sort of...coexisting with the venomous kind of spider has made me so much more tolerant of the rest of them. Unfortunately, I am not cured of my mortifyingly intense fear/disgust, but me and the arachnid population are more or less coexisting in relative peace now, so...that’s something? Anyway...take care, until next time! 


End file.
